Echo of Atonement
by InTheShadowOfSignificance
Summary: "Pegasus holds all the cards right now. As long as he keeps us prisoners, we're at his mercy no matter the outcome." Duelist Kingdom has no happy ending. AU. Rewrite of "The Stockholm Game"
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yugioh, nor do I claim rights to any of the affiliated characters.

 **Warnings/Notes** : An alternate ending to the Duelist Kingdom arc in which Pegasus is not always a man of his word. Rated for profanity, reference to violence and bodily injury, and mind games in general. Be advised that the rating may change as the story progresses.

* * *

 _Pegasus holds all the cards right now._

 _As long as keeps us prisoners, we're at his mercy no matter what the outcome of the game._

* * *

Deep down none of them had expected this.

Yugi had fought so valiantly, and they too had battled, armor up, hazard signs out, waiting to be torn through by the hurricane of Pegasus's misguided perception. It was a perfect victory. They _earned_ it. But in the end, for all their efforts, they had become captives.

The card game did not matter, it never had.

* * *

I.

* * *

The scream that woke him from sleep was not his own but echoed like the steady drum of his heartbeat. Yugi pressed a hand to his raw throat and sat up. Opening his eyes didn't banish the darkness and when he let his hand down against the frigid stone, the cold cut him to the core. This wasn't home. He didn't know _what_ this was.

He pressed to his feet on trembling legs and stumbled forward into the bars, one hand wrapping around them, the other rising to his cheek to rub the ache away. He knew the disembodied voice, could feel its pain so keenly his very being recoiled.

His mouth was too dry to speak and his tongue muffled the parched words.

Where…?

The scream echoed, muddled as if under water. He blinked hard and stared down at the darkness, eyes trailing left and right until he could make out some of the creases in the stone. There was a wall torch lit to his left and he followed the silent call of the light as far as it reached.

Stifled groans surrounded him and brought the memories back: Pegasus's face, Grandpa's plea, the whirlwind of the tournament and agony of the shadow realm.

Whatever beasts made a game of mauling him had the spirit now. Their talons made flesh of his soul just to shred it, and the desperate call for release made the smaller boy shiver.

It was agony. He had felt it. And there was nothing he could do to save any of them here.

"What have I done now…?" Yugi broke away from the stream of light to stare directly across from him. It was barely bright enough to make out a silhouette.

"Bakura…?" He croaked.

"Yugi –" Ryou breathed, trying to tame the relief. _He's alive. You didn't kill them. This wasn't your fault._ "Where are we – I don't understand."

Yugi forced himself to swallow and tried not to wish for water to coat his mouth and tongue, "Did I lose the duel?"

"No," Tea said shakily, moving to the edge of her cell. "I remember you came out of that fog, we were so worried something had happened but you stood up, you were okay, and then…" Her voice broke and she knocked her hand against the bars trying to feel for them. "Why are we here?" She asked, "We did everything we had to."

"I don't think it was about the game." Tristan said from beside her.

Two more wall torches lit themselves at the end of the corridor and everyone strained to look.

"Mokuba!"

"Niisama!"

Seto reached as far as his arm allowed, shoulder protesting as he strained against the bars for one more inch, just a fraction, to graze Mokuba's outstretched fingers.

"I can't do this again," The younger cried, stretching for more of Seto's touch, "I want to go home!"

"I know kid," He said softly, "We'll get through this. We've gotten through all the cheap tricks before. Pegasus has to crawl out of these shadows eventually and when he does, I'll be ready."

If deprivation was the endgame, Pegasus had come three years too late. Gozaburo honed brilliance with brutality and a few days without food wouldn't kill him. But the chill of Mokuba's fingers brought home a harrowing truth. He wouldn't survive what Seto had. He had been in hell too long already.

"If it's not about the duel," Tea said, tugging at the bars like she might pull one loose, "What does that leave? We don't have millennium items. We don't have Kaiba's technology."

Tristan tackled the bars until his aching body protested. "He can't just let us go free. Even if we kept quiet, it would draw attention. The last place Yugi and Kaiba were seen was Pegasus's island. We come back and they don't?" He shook his head, "It's no good."

"You know Pegasus's game by now. This was business to him and he played to win." Seto replied.

Joey grunted in frustration, fist connecting hard with the wall and drawing blood from two knuckles. "I ain't a prize to be won, Kaiba!" He snapped, "I got too much ridin' on the outcome of this tournament to _rot_ down here."

"That was your first mistake." Seto replied.

"We can't all walk into fortune like you, money bags."

"My brother didn't _walk_ into anything! He worked hard for what we have – or had – until Pegasus stole it all." Mokuba lost his breath but kept his snarl.

"Kaiba's right," Ryou said quietly, in a tone that seemed to draw the darkness of the room, "Our first mistake was trusting a thief."

A guard appeared at the end of the hall. One moment, no more than a breath, and the lights went out.

"That's it?" Joey asked with a laugh, "He pays 'em six figures to babysit and kill lights if we don't play nice?"

"Joey!" Tea hissed.

"No – _fuck_ this – he told us to play by the rules, we played by the rules. Yugi won that duel even with Pegasus cheating every step of the way. He won, Tea, that's the end of it."

"But it isn't," She pleaded, voice barely above a whisper.

 _Don't make him angry._

 _I don't want to die down here._

The first time she let the thought slip free, it consumed her. No one knew where she was. Even if Joey or Tristan told their families, it wouldn't count for much. Pegasus had an island and the equivalent of a militarized police force at his immediate disposal. She'd seen how many guards kept watch of the castle and the grounds, all of them amply armed. What good could they do, even all together, against a fleet of well-paid men?

They couldn't even contend with a few bars.

The more Mokuba's breathing picked up in the cell beside her, the more hope leaked from her eyes, wasting precious water and energy. The stone slab of a bed against the wall wouldn't allow for much rest and as time went on the temperature would keep dropping. Her feet already burned against the damp stone and she sat cross-legged to press them against one another.

Who had removed her socks and shoes?

"Yugi, do you have your puzzle?" She asked.

"No." He whispered. "It's gone."

She let her head fall back against one of the stone walls and winced at the moisture.

Someone had to find them here. If the Kaibas were back, Grandpa would wake up too. He'd tell someone where they were, and if not him then a journalist or jilted duelist who didn't make the cut for the island. It was the biggest tournament in Duel Monsters history and the top contenders hadn't made it home. Someone _had_ to come looking.

* * *

II.

* * *

Mokuba's scream pulled them from their thoughts, piercing the silence with wails of too-young agony no one knew how to tame.

Seto shot to his feet, reaching blindly in the dark.

"Don't take me back," Mokuba sobbed, "Please, you can have it, don't take me back."

"You're not going back." Seto promised, swallowing any pride that whispered he couldn't afford to be what Mokuba needed right now. That warned he couldn't give Pegasus this softness to exploit, not with cameras watching, not with their lives at stake. "I'm right here, I'm sorry I can't reach you but I'm right here." He coaxed.

He stretched, tendons in his shoulders threatening to tear with the exertion, but Mokuba couldn't shake himself from the stupor long enough to reach back. The only thread of comfort they had managed was thwarted in darkness.

"I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't –" His words dissolved into short, shuddering breaths and Seto cursed as he got to his feet.

"You can hear my voice Mokuba, just focus on me. Reach your hand out and I'll hold it."

"I c-can-n-n't, they'll take me back. Those things will take me ba-ack."

"There are no creatures Mokuba; that was all a trick." Downplaying Mokuba's distress wouldn't alleviate it, but he couldn't let him delve further into a panic attack or he'd never be able to pull out of it. Wheeler's words spun around his head and if not for the bars he might have lunged for him. But there was no point in lying to Mokuba by telling him they were safe, he was old enough to know what this was, what it meant. Pegasus would leave them to rot down here if that's what he wanted, and not a single soul would be able to get to them in time. Not with an army of guns and twice as many targets on their heads. It was different when they were collateral, but now that Pegasus had everything he wanted?

Now that there was nothing standing in the way of Kaiba Corp?

"We'll give him what he wants!" Yugi called, "Just turn on the lights, we'll give him what he wants!"

The darkness seemed to grow thicker, imitating Pegasus's taunts.

 _You'll know what I want when it serves me, and not a moment before._

"And if he just wants to get rid of us?" Tea asked.

"I'm almost afraid it's worse." Ryou whispered. "If he never intended to play fair, why go through the guise of a tournament at all? Why not just take us in secret, without the attention of a televised event? If he was worried about bad publicity or the possibility of law enforcement stepping in, he'd have a lot more to answer for than keeping us in a dungeon. There were flamethrowers in the arenas, middle school kids nearly sealed in a cave. I hate to say it, but it sounds as if this whole thing is just one, sick game. It must have taken years to set up, and it's no secret he had cameras everywhere to watch the mayhem unfold. Who does he answer to all the way out here, the police, the media? This island is a playground." And they were the entertainment.

"It was part of the charade." Tea realized, voice trembling, "He's been toying with us all this time. He wanted to see what we could do."

"Or," Tristan interjected, remembering Mokuba's once lifeless body against his own as he carried it out of the dungeon and into the light, "He wanted us to see what he could do. I think it's like Mai said when it came time for Kaiba and Pegasus to have their duel, it was meant to intimidate us. All of this is him flaunting his own control. We have to show him we won't back down."

"Tristan's right, we've beaten everything else he's thrown at us. We just have to keep fighting." Joey agreed.

"Guys, as much as I'd like to agree and as much as I want out of here…I think it's time we realize this is a different game. In the tournament there were chances to gain the upper hand, in a dungeon I just don't see how we can. This is an ultimatum. Whatever Pegasus really wants was saved for now."

A flame sprung to life in the torch at the end of the corridor, illuminating Mokuba's tear-stained face.

* * *

III.

* * *

They slept in dim light, throats too dry to talk, lips swollen and cracked. Every so often Yugi stirred awake to Grandpa's voice and let it blanket him against the cold assault of stone. The words belonged to a bedtime story he'd been told from the womb, spun as dutifully as if Grandpa had carried it in his own.

 _It's a myth that only women give life, Yugi._

Gazing into Grandpa's tired eyes, he believed every word. The gold box on the top shelf of his closet was only a whisper then.

Now, with the pieces calling him just as relentlessly, he repeated the story to himself.

To know a demon's true name is to take its power.

To defeat a beast is simply to know its nature: what it needs, what it covets, what it fears.

There is nothing more damning than to look a man in the face and tell him what he is, to avoid evading the truth – because the deceitful often do – and deal the harsh blow to his façade. Be wary of beings that make themselves nameless: they have more to hide than you have to bargain for.

" _And if I do bargain, Grandpa?"_

" _It will be all you have: gamblers don't do things by halves, my boy."_

He drifted again, this time to a story he could hardly place. The last line before he fell to sleep faded from Grandpa's voice into Pegasus's, and Yugi resented that more than anything else.

"… _and so the two men dueled for a single share of water."_

His throat ached.

* * *

IV.

* * *

The only thing worse than waking to screams was waking to silence.

Yugi struggled for traction against the stone, feet half-numb, room spinning even in darkness enough to leave it shapeless. They had all been too long without water. He stood to walk some warmth into his limbs and found himself almost unable to balance. With the duel against Pegasus looming, he hadn't managed more than a sip of water. It had been at least a day in the dungeon by now. Add to that the day of his duel and the time it took to sleep off the sedative, and he was due for hallucinations.

He tried to swallow and couldn't. For a moment fear of the end gripped him and he forgot how, throat squeezed together, frozen halfway through the motion. It was Kaiba's voice that finally brought forth an exhale, choked and at the top of his breath.

"Mutou." He said quietly, "Do you have water?"

To ask, he must have been desperate. Yugi strained and squinted to look more into the light, his vision limited by the stone walls encasing him to either side.

"No," He rasped, "I'm sorry."

"I'm so thirsty, Niisama."

"I'll get you something to drink." Seto promised, and even on the brink of delirium Joey managed to sigh in sympathy. It was the saddest, most infuriating thing the elder brother had ever seen, and he thought in that moment that even if he could forgive Pegasus everything else, the torture of a child was exempt. If it wouldn't mean Serenity losing her sight – he ached to think she might have already – he'd sooner set fire to Crawford's money than take it.

He wasn't afraid to thirst to death, but he was terrified of listening to Pegasus torture Mokuba while Seto watched without hope.

He closed his eyes against the glare of more lights and tried not to remember the flash before Seto's soul left his body.

* * *

V.

* * *

The brightness of the room burned. They only forced themselves to adjust when Seto got to his feet.

"Pegasus."

Crawford tipped a straw hat, out of place with the red suit and polished dress shoes, and held it over his heart.

"You can manage that but not a good morning? And here I thought a few days in the dungeon would teach you some respect."

"Just what are you playing at?" Seto demanded, taking the chance to get a real look at Mokuba. His skin was dull and lifeless, eyes sunken like he hadn't slept in months. It took all he had not to coax the boy to his feet, and he might have if they were alone. Pegasus wanted a show and the only act of defiance left was refusing to be one.

"Mind your tone, Seto Kaiba, or this water leaves with me." He strode to the middle of the eight cells, one of which was empty and hanging wide open.

Joey stared at the barred door and let himself imagine shoving Pegasus in.

"I've come to enforce the rules for the rest of your stay." He announced, reaching through Seto's bars with a bottle of water. The elder Kaiba didn't take it, and Pegasus held his eyes while it dropped with a _crack_ to the stone floor. It rolled, dented and dirty, to the tips of Seto's toes.

"If and when I decide to bring you into my home, you will do exactly as you're told, as soon as you're told, without question." He handed Tea the next bottle of water and she almost asked if accepting it was an order. She took it with the edges of her fingers and waited for him to let go. When he didn't, she abandoned his redwood iris for the gray stone of the dungeon floor. "You will address me as sir and nothing else."

"Thank you." She whispered.

"How fast you learn, Tea dear."

He let go of the bottle and she scrambled to support it with her other hand so it didn't tumble to the floor.

If he had it in him, Joey would have spit in Crawford's face, but the fact that he didn't was reason enough to play along. That and the flashes of auburn he saw every time he closed his eyes.

When it was his turn – and of course it had been saved for last – Mokuba took the water too quickly. Pegasus kept his own grip, firmer than anything Mokuba could muster in his fatigue.

"What do we say?"

"Thank you sir." Mokuba slurred, tugging at the bottle.

"Not you."

Seto closed his eyes, teeth gritting sharply against each other. He'd sooner give Mokuba his water than let Pegasus degrade him like this. But Pegasus had brought just one bottle each, and Mokuba would need most of both at least.

"Thank you." He relented with as much contempt as he could muster.

"Excuse me?"

Seto stared hard at the back of Pegasus's head, trying not to bleed the creases of his red suit into Gozaburo's. The water bottle might as well have been a riding crop for all the difference in the situation, and he promised himself his stepfather would be the last to ever draw 'sir' from his lips.

Pegasus uncapped the bottle in Mokuba's fingers and took it from his grasp even as Seto surrendered.

" _-sir."_

" _Thank you, sir."_

The liquid hit the floor and Joey watched it run with his eyes closed, as clearly as if Pegasus had slapped him. It splattered against Mokuba's pant leg and the boy shrunk back to the stone slab against the wall.

When Pegasus turned, crushing the empty plastic in his hand, Seto couldn't even meet his eyes through Mokuba's horror.

"Have we reached an understanding?"

 _\- as soon as you're told -_

"Yes, sir."

Pegasus withdrew a spare bottle from the eighth cell and left it upright in the puddle of the first. The echo of his footsteps was all they heard before the descent back into darkness.

* * *

" _This is the way the world ends.  
Not with a bang but a whimper."  
\- T.S Eliot_

If you're an original fan of "The Stockholm Game," I can't thank you enough for checking out the reboot. I hope you enjoy it!


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yugioh, nor do I claim rights to any of the affiliated characters. Any branding you may recognize does not belong to me. This story is completely non-profit; I am not here to endorse any company or product thereof.

 **Warnings/Notes:** The following chapter contains profanity and brief reference to bodily injury. The further the story progresses, the deeper Pegasus's madness runs. Though there are suggestive themes, his malice is not sexual in nature and will not evolve to include anything grotesque in that way.

* * *

I.

* * *

Her arm was numb when the lights came up but the lines of Mokuba's palms tingled across her skin, molded there. The smaller fingers – too thin – withdrew on a groan. The glow of the torches was strong and they were all eager to block it. Tea guided her arm back through the bars, wincing as she straightened it for the first time in hours, and used her other hand to start fixing the circulation. She'd been holding Mokuba's hand so long she managed to drown out the horrible notion of Seto not being able to reach it.

Through the glare of red behind her eyelids came the searing heat of gold, radiating with power so strong it stopped her breath. She lay sprawled on the stone until he broke his eyes away and only managed to sit up to turn her back to him. The illusion of privacy couldn't quell the shiver stuck between her neck and spine. She held her breath and waited for the words that left a tangible chill in the room.

"Good morning, Kaiba-boy."

From the depth of the cell, the whites of Seto's eyes stood out like stars.

"What time is it?"

"Quarter to seven." Pegasus replied, "Come closer."

 _as soon as you're told._

"Dealing with you this early almost makes me feel like a priority." He said, taking the few steps necessary to come into the light. Three more separated him from the bars, from Pegasus, and if not for the finger beckoning him forward, Seto would have kept it that way.

"You won't reach your breakfast all the way back there." Pegasus insisted.

Seto scoffed, straightening his fingers to fit them through the narrow gap, "I'll manage."

Breakfast was nothing more than a sealed pack of toaster pastries and a few bottles of water, but he left everything on the stone cot before returning to Pegasus.

"And not a single compliment for the chef," Crawford tutted, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"I'm sure Tony the Tiger will cry himself to sleep tonight."

"Wrong mascot."

"Same company, same sentiment. Why are we here?"

"Until you've learned to behave, this is where I want you."

Seto closed his eyes to drown out his stepfather's voice. How had he gotten two men so heinously wrong? How upon meeting Pegasus Crawford did he see salvation where there was only sacrilege?

When desperation threw them head-first into hell, it was Crawford who became the pillar of his absolution. And now…?

This pit twisted its laughter through his insides until they burst.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you."

Seto did, biting back a snarl at the eclipse of gold behind Pegasus's hair. "There's nothing standing in your way of my company." He said matter-of-factly. "Why are we here?"

"Because you don't deserve my castle yet."

The only thing worse than Pegasus's evasion was being forced to go along with it, but Mokuba was too far to reach, so he did, "Why don't we?"

He leaned forward slightly, cheek propped in his palm, staring too intently, "That's the question, isn't it?"

* * *

II.

* * *

"Hello Joseph."

Hand still clamped around the first of the water bottles, Joey finished Pegasus's sentence with a line he'd heard in a horror movie. ' _I want to play a game._ '

Staring at him from the damp confines of a dungeon, he reconsidered the idea that physical torture wasn't Pegasus's thing. He'd seen a lot of thugs in his life. Enough, he thought, to know who liked to get their hands dirty. He chalked the miscalculation up to never dealing with one on a VHS tape before.

"It warm where you are?" He asked once he had his share of food and water.

"Quite, actually. How many years are there between you and Serenity?"

Joey uncapped the water and took a long drink. "Why do you care?"

"There are thirteen lower levels to this dungeon if you'd prefer I didn't."

He rolled his eyes and focused on the water so he wouldn't say something he'd regret. Pegasus had already proved he wouldn't punish the offending party for what they said, and before this was over he had a sinking feeling his temper would land Yugi in Crawford's burial ground.

"Almost four, her birthday's at the end of November, mine's the end of January."

Pegasus resumed sitting on the floor but Joey made no move to match his stance. "Give me a date at the end of November."

"The 20th."

Three days off from Cecelia's.

* * *

III.

* * *

"Mr. Taylor." Pegasus greeted, passing the food and water through slowly, "How the tables have turned."

Tristan bent to leave the water in a corner before tearing open the toaster pastries. Everyone else had been too preoccupied, or maybe embarrassed, to eat in front of Pegasus, but he wasn't. Let Crawford prattle on about having them right where he wanted them, just because he couldn't argue didn't mean he had to indulge him.

"I admit you caused a nasty bit of trouble parading yourself through my dungeon like you owned the place, but it seems fitting for you to call part of it your own now." He sat down as Tristan took a bite. "What _have_ we learned about sneaking around other people's private property?"

"Other people extended an invite." He replied, bending for a bottle of water.

"Not to you."

Tristan shrugged and took a drink, "Not to Joey either."

"If Joseph had been the one to breach my boundaries, I'd dare say he didn't earn his keep, but as it stands." He met the boy's eyes and smiled when the younger gaze didn't waver. Tristan took another bite, half of his first pastry gone with it.

"What would you know about boundaries?" He asked through a mouthful, "Or privacy, for that matter."

"The irony of asking that from a cage is lost to you, I'm sure."

Pastry crumbs fell to the stone floor as he clenched a fist, "When people come looking for us they'll start with you. I may not fit into your master plan, but people will look for me. My father-"

"Yes, yes, the man who raised you was a police officer." Pegasus interjected. Through the surge of adrenaline, Tristan didn't question the phrasing.

"Threatened?" He asked.

"Intrigued."

"He'll know how to find your island."

Pegasus pressed a hand to his chest, "Thank heavens steering a boat comes with the badge." The pattern of freckles along Tristan's nose stood out when he wrinkled it, trivial but familiar. "You feel small beside me," he lifted his chin to the trembling form behind the bars, "Don't you?"

He sunk to his knees while Pegasus found his feet.

* * *

IV.

* * *

"That look in your eyes is almost regretful." Pegasus said as he passed Ryou's food and water through the bars.

"Almost is one of the strongest words in the language." The boy replied, marking the first of his captives to match his seated stance limb for limb. If he inched just a bit closer, his feet would line up with Ryou's through the bars.

"And the others?"

"Just one," Ryou whispered, softly enough that Pegasus strained to hear.

"Enlighten me."

"Never." He said, and took a long drink of water with hands that shook too hard. It dripped down the front of his shirt and he wiped it away on a hand, wincing at the new chill that wrapped around it.

"You're unspeakably clever." Ryou took a moment to open his breakfast by tearing the seam lengthwise, "Are you an only child?"

He snapped the corner of the pastry too eagerly and crushed it between his fingers, bringing the dust to his tongue so he wouldn't have to speak. It coated his mouth, drying it further and turning the water to paste. Several minutes went by before he realized the aching lump in his throat wasn't the residue of his paltry bite. He set the rest aside anyway.

"Brother or sister?" Pegasus pressed in a voice too artfully softened.

"Sister."

"Does she have a name?"

"It's Amane."

Giving a child a name with that kind of power and history made him ache.

"How old is she?" He asked before the memories could draw him in deeper.

"She's – she was –"

He held up a hand, cutting the sentence short before Ryou had sorted it out. Pegasus's feet skidded under him as he pushed himself to stand. _Was_.

The name had been an omen, just like _hers_.

"Have I done something wrong?" Ryou asked, and there was more fear in his voice than belonged anywhere near him. Pegasus knew the distance behind his tone as keenly as if it had its own sentience, and nearly shivered to think that it did.

 _What have I done now?_

He stared at Ryou's still-trembling fingers like he might crouch to take them, if he could only afford to. This was no time to be getting lost in the past. The only reason things had spiraled this far out of control, the only reason he'd lost grip, was because he'd spent so long in what almost was.

 _Almost is one of the strongest words in the language._

A boy Ryou's age shouldn't be so wise, shouldn't carry burdens thousands of years old, shouldn't be robbed of half his loved ones and abandoned by the rest.

 _What have I done now, what have I done now, what have I done…_

"Last night you called me a thief; did you ever stop to think that it was _you_ who stole from _me_?"

* * *

V.

* * *

"Is that true?" Tea asked to beat him to the punch. "That we stole something from you?"

"Things are easily replaced, Tea-dear." She didn't let herself think about how tired he was when he said it, like he had been battling with the weight for years.

"I don't understand." She said softly.

"I know."

Rather than press, she did as all the others had and opened her water to stall for time. The bars on Seto's cell were rusted and she couldn't shake the nagging thought that Mokuba had been kept there. It would be just like Pegasus to bring Seto back before Mokuba, if only to shove him into the cell that held his brother's lifeless body. Men pinned Seto in. Men marched Mokuba out. She imagined Seto's fingers clawing into his brother's shirt, begging him to hold on, begging him to wake up. By the time Pegasus released him from the shadow realm, Seto's iron cage closed, and Mokuba's reach only brushed the tips of his fingers.

"You have quite the imagination."

She flinched, nearly spilling water down the front of herself like Ryou. "Is that why we're here? We stole something irreplaceable?"

Pegasus ran a finger the length of the bar, "Did you?" He whispered.

"If we've taken something, we didn't mean to. We can give back the cards – we can –"

"That's just it, little girl, you've stumbled into something you can _never_ take back."

* * *

VI.

* * *

"If you want your breakfast, you'll have to come get it like everyone else."

Mokuba shrunk back against the corner of the cell and breathed into his fingers to ward off the chill. The puddle of water hadn't dried from the night before and he was half convinced it had frozen over.

"Trying my patience isn't keeping you any safer."

"I'm sorry." He mumbled.

"Then come get your food."

Mokuba's legs wouldn't carry him across the cell. He stumbled, shoulder connecting hard with the wall and sending a dull ache through his body. Dehydration left the world turning under his feet and for the life of him he couldn't set them straight enough to walk. The shackles were under the cot. Seto was on the wrong side of the bars. Even from the very edges of his prison, Pegasus was too close.

"Maybe you'd prefer if I came to you." He stepped back to search for the key and Mokuba sprung forward, kicking one of the empty water bottles at the bars in his haste.

"I'm sorry, I'm sor-"

Pegasus pressed a full one to Mokuba's closed fists and held it against the boy's too-white knuckles until he could take it. "Drink," He instructed, "You'll feel better."

Mokuba stepped back into the darker recesses of the cell without the second bottle or the food, inspecting the packaging like Seto had taught him, with emphasis on the seal and any tiny perforations behind the label. As with the first two bottles, there were none.

"From here on out, if any of you share food or water you will be punished appropriately. What you get is for you and you alone." He reached through the bars to take the evidence of Seto's water bottle from Mokuba's cell and toss it aside. "Come and get the rest, Mokuba."

"I don't need it…" He whispered.

"Are you going to make me treat you like a toddler?"

Mokuba couldn't make himself move closer. Pegasus hadn't spoken to him in that tone since the first day he stowed him in the tower, before the bedsheets and the dungeons and the threats, back when the only words between them were in too-smooth voices, trying to soothe fear he himself had instilled.

Too many times he had said this was only a matter of business. What business was left?

"If you're not across this floor by the time I count to three –"

He took the water and food with the same hand, not caring that the pastries cracked in his desperate grip.

"Thank you."

Pegasus pressed his fingers between Mokuba's before he let go, "You're very welcome."

* * *

VII.

* * *

"Please tell me he's okay."

"He will be if you cooperate."

Yugi swallowed thickly and let the food and water fall just inside the bars, reaching through to take Pegasus's sleeve, "I'll do anything you ask me to – please – I'll-"

"Let go of me."

Yugi's fingers shook as he forced himself to loosen his grip, "He's all I have, Pegasus, please."

All the more reason.

"Call me that again and he doesn't get out."

Yugi's fingers fell away and he bowed his head, sinking to his knees to grasp futilely at the water. They sat too long without talking, and the more Pegasus's impatience grew, the louder the spirit's screams became. Grandpa wasn't young. He wouldn't survive this.

"I'm sorry about the title; we can tell the world I lost. No one will say a word about this."

"You think I'm keeping you in a dungeon because you became King of Games?"

Yugi blinked owlishly, rubbing the moisture from his eyes as it threatened to fall.

"Before the tournament I'd never even met you, how could I have stolen from you?"

"You're a smart boy," Pegasus said, "You'll figure it out."

Yugi ran through his time in Duelist Kingdom, from tape, to boat, to island. What could he have possibly stolen? Pegasus took Grandpa, even if he ended up damaging property to spare his life – there had been the cave and the flamethrowers – what could compare to that?

Pegasus took Grandpa's _soul_.

"Are you upset I brought the others?"

"I could have had them thrown off the boat."

"Why didn't you?"

"They didn't hinder what I was trying to do."

Yugi braved a glance then. His friends were the reason he made it to the castle, between Bakura's ring guiding them to the labyrinth, Tea pulling him back from the brink of desolation, and everyone ganging up to keep Pegasus out of his mind during the final match, he couldn't have done it without them. He wouldn't have even made it to the finals.

"What were you trying to do, other than get the puzzle?"

"That's another question I can't answer."

Yugi uncurled his fists and presented Pegasus with his palms, "I can't stop you in here."

Pegasus chuckled, "Yugi-boy, you can't stop me period."

Yugi closed his eyes against a fresh onset of tears, "I didn't mean to take anything from you, I left everything exactly as I found it. You can check my clothes and my luggage. Grandpa owns the cards shop, that's how he came up with most of the cards I have now. They're very precious to me but I know they're yours in the end, you made them right? You can have them all back if you just give me my Grandpa. Let him go and keep me if you have to. If you tell me how to fix it I will."

Pegasus reached a hand through the bars to wipe Yugi's tears with his thumb. "I know." He said, and left them to the darkness.

* * *

VIII.

* * *

The room dissolved into stillness, each of them lost in their own thoughts. He had taken their voices without demanding their silence, painted their hands with their own blood and left them the unspeakable ultimatum to surrender or die.

When Yugi came back to himself, there wasn't so much as a faint drip of water to keep him rooted to reality. He sat so long with his thoughts that even the glare of the light became too heavy. He closed his eyes against it and listened to everyone's breathing until he could separate it by rhythm. Bakura's was too soft, like he was sitting at the backmost edge of his cell. Joey's hitched on thoughts he didn't trust himself to vocalize. Mokuba's shuddered, drawing the cold closer and deeper until even Yugi's numb fingers, stuffed desperately in his pockets, ached to the bone.

"How are we supposed to get out of here Niisama?"

Moisture pooled behind Tea's eyes when she realized his voice wasn't just shaking from the cold.

"He took everything we have and it still wasn't enough." He sobbed, "We should have stayed at the orphanage. We should have given him Kaiba Corp –"

"Mokuba –"

"I don't want to die down here!"

Hearing the words from Mokuba's mouth ignited the thought all over again. Tea's heart sunk to her feet, breaking everything inside her on the way down. She pressed a hand over her mouth, shoulders rising and falling with repressed sobs until she couldn't hold her breath anymore.

"Don't crack on me Tea, if he wanted us out of the picture he'd have taken us out." Joey said, pacing the floor with both hands woven through his hair.

"We never took anything from him," She squeaked, doing her best to swallow the tears. Another sob rose from her chest and she pinched the corners of her eyes, coaching herself through deep breaths. "Why is he doing this?"

Seto reached for Mokuba's fingers and let himself relax enough to rub warmth into the tiny fraction he could reach. "Pegasus is a delusional narcissist with a god-complex, this is all a cheap manipulation tactic, just stop bargaining with him."

"Wake up, would ya Kaiba? I don't like it either but we're in a fucking dungeon, he's off his rocker, what else are we supposed t'do?"

"Figure out what he really wants."

"What could it be if not revenge? Sure it's ridiculous but it's the only thing that makes sense." Tristan cut in.

"It's also exactly what he wants you to believe." Seto's shoulder shook and he stabilized it with his other hand so he wouldn't have to pull himself away from Mokuba. "Whose ass was your head up during the duels that you don't know the game by now? He feeds you answers and taunts you for taking them. Despite the castle and the fireworks, Crawford's a man who takes care of things quietly. We need to head off whatever this is before it gets any bigger."

While the others talked over one another, Yugi and Ryou ran through Kaiba's words. Pegasus managed to kidnap Mokuba, take his soul, and make Seto a puppet to get it back. Especially after Seto's loss, Pegasus had no reason to free them. If he wanted to make them suffer there was no better way than keeping them sealed in the cards, those vast and vicious dimensions of hell.

"What do you mean 'before it gets any bigger?'" Ryou asked.

"I don't know what he's scheming or who he has in on it, but he told me we didn't deserve the castle _yet_. That means, like it or not, he wants us up there."

"Do _we_ want to be up there?" Ryou asked.

"Probably not, but we have to go up to get out." Tristan replied.

It hurt to cry in front of Mokuba, especially with the light too far away to do anything for his anxiety, but Tea sobbed all the harder. Staying in the dungeon was suicide and facing Pegasus was a nightmare.

She held Mokuba's hand when he reached for her, in too much pain to keep hyperextending for Seto, and hoped that it would be easier to be afraid together. The hours passed slowly and without reprieve. Once in a while they broke away to flex their fingers or rub the chill from their arms, but eventually the hall fell into silence again.

Quiet seemed to build upon the already mounting terror. There were seven of them in a room, desperate to be closer to one another but unable to speak a word. With so much looming over their heads they couldn't combat a single obstacle, even with hopeless idealism.

After all these weeks of fighting their way through the island, they were at his mercy.

The thought seemed to grip them all at the same time, bringing them to their numbing feet to pace.

What if Pegasus grew bored of doing things quietly?

What if this time around, there was no mercy left?

* * *

IX.

* * *

When Pegasus returned, he brought three men. Two left trays of food and water at the mouth of the hall, the last offered a white case Yugi couldn't make out as he winced against the light.

He stopped in the middle of the cells and waited to see if they'd lift the silence.

"This –" he growled, jerking Joey's arm through the bars, " – is going to get infected down here." He traced a finger over the dried blood on Joey's knuckles and twisted his arm painfully when he tried to pull away. "Hold still." He ordered, pinning his arm there until he'd inspected the abrasion well enough. A smear of antibiotic ointment on a piece of gauze was the best he could do in the struggle.

"Get – off me!"

Pegasus did, tossing Joey's hand away like it was dead weight and storming to Mokuba's cell. The boy shrunk back into the darkness and Pegasus closed his eyes to vent his frustration, shoulders rising and falling with the deep breath.

"I thought Niisama would have taken better care of you." He said lowly, "What a shame."

He shrugged out of his red suit jacket, folded it in half, and laid it over the puddle of water Mokuba's footprints had drug through the freezing cell.

"Mop that up or you'll catch cold."

By the time he started passing out the military rations, preheated in their foil bags, he had calmed down a bit.

"Well Yugi boy," He said, offering the pouch of tepid food and collecting the empty water bottles as he had for the others. "Are you going to tell me what I am?"

* * *

" _Oh, the things we invent when we are scared  
and want to be rescued."  
\- Richard Siken_

I'm sorry this chapter is a little disjointed, it was supposed to feel more like a series of individual scenes with the captives but I'm not sure how well that turned out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yugioh, nor do I claim rights to any of the affiliated characters.

 **Warnings/Notes:** This chapter doesn't mince words, be careful reading ahead if you're squeamish about bodily functions.

* * *

I.

* * *

In the three months it took to get an honest answer they spiraled further into darkness. The dungeon was ripe with the smell of sour urine and if they ever dreamed deep enough to wake unaccustomed to it, their throats watered well before their eyes.

 _Don't be sick, don't be sick, don't be –_

And invariably someone would gag, a deep ripple domino effect that spanned the length of cells in minutes. Fingers pressed to mouths, throats wet, stomachs twisting with whatever remnants of food they managed through the night. Forcing something up brought no relief, just a terrible ache in their tired joints, every muscle screaming with the effort. The others closed their eyes and listened to the offender pull in sharp, desperate breaths through their mouth.

The tears were contagious too, in those heavy moments just after the vomiting when everyone realized what it meant: more filth with nowhere to go. Before he fell to sleep at night – he guessed it was night, there was no sense of time in this hell – Yugi wondered if Pegasus relished their sobs.

He woke to dead-end plans about how to make the situation more bearable.

Tea was the first to resort to using one of her four daily water bottles to clean up a little. It was frigid underground so at least they didn't sweat, but it was little consolation when trying to wash away months of dirt. It clung under her too long nails and came away murky grit when she cleaned underneath them. She shivered at the kiss of the water and sobbed when it reached the floor. Worse than if it had been wasted, it spread whatever excrement the damp stone refused to absorb.

The longer Pegasus's footsteps stopped just out of sight, pausing to acclimate himself to the smell so he wouldn't choke on it, the easier it was to give into the buzzing hysteria that they were going to die down here. One day soon he'd decide the veiled conversations weren't worth the effort and leave them to rot.

Seto counted the days - ninety-two - before Pegasus came down with his thumbs in his pockets, no food or water to follow.

He steadied himself and stared at Mokuba in the cell catty corner to him, begging for something he could use. He was loathed to side with anyone Yugi associated with, but the kid on the end had it right. There was no hope in a dungeon and his little brother couldn't take much more hopelessness. He already knew too much.

"Let's try again, Yugi-boy, show me you have heart."

Yugi's lips parted and tears prickled at the corners of his eyes, making them burn. "Please, I'll tell you anything you want me to. I don't understand."

"It's not that complicated, I'm only asking for the truth."

 _My truth isn't what you want to hear._

Pegasus's eye shone gold beneath his hair, lifting it on an inhuman current of energy. "Say that out loud."

His throat opened too wide, cramping when he tried to swallow. "I…my truth…isn't what you want to hear."

" _Your truth_ is what I've waited three months for. It's not so easy to hurt people when we have to own up to it, is it? You've been sitting on it like that would hide it from me, but it haunts this entire dungeon. How did you muster the courage to pick up a card, let alone parade yourself around my island playing hero when you can't even say two words?"

Yugi sunk to his knees in the middle of the cell, the light of the torches chasing him on the way down.

"You came all this way to save one old man, if you disobey me again tonight it will be the end of everyone else you hold dear. Do you understand?" Yugi let out a sob, "If that's a yes, I want to hear it out loud."

"Y-yes sir."

"Are you going to tell me what I am?"

"Y-yes sir."

He waited impatiently, the eye growing hot against his skin, tempting. He could kill the ravenous energy with a single thought. Yugi's body would slump to the ground, rough stone drawing blood from his cheek, and for a brief, blessed time, the eye would fall silent again. He would go to bed without the ache for more power tearing his soul in two. The older soul would have been more suitable if he hadn't been forced to hack him up and hide him away.

Young Yugi, the real Yugi, was like sipping hot water to fool a stomach into silence; the eye would pick older Yugi clean and spend thousands of years content, sucking malice from his bones. He shook his head to free himself from the evil inside it.

"I know you want to end this: take a hot shower, sleep in a bed, use a proper bathroom. Tell me what I am." The harrowing screams of his wife proved the boy had it in him.

Yugi's hands shook at his sides and he lifted his head just enough to glimpse Ryou's feet. The white haired boy didn't look at him, it had been months since anyone but Seto and Mokuba looked at each other. It was a trap. He would speak his truth and Pegasus would use it to keep them locked away forever. It was why he hadn't brought food. He was going to force the horrible, bitter thought out in the open and then –

"I can see it running through your mind over and over, you know. All I'm telling you to do is say it out loud."

Another beat of silence and he turned away from Yugi's cell to the corridors beyond.

"You're a monster." Yugi choked, voice hoarse and bloodied.

Pegasus paused to relish his victory, looking at the cesspool they'd made of his dungeon. "Given the proper incentive, aren't we all?"

The room sat frozen on the current of his words, each of them searching for hidden meaning.

"We would never hurt you." Tea whispered, "We never meant to hurt anyone. If we've done something wrong, please, just tell us. How can we fix it if we don't know what happened?"

"You'll understand when I want you to."

Yugi found his feet, swallowing thickly, "What did you want me to understand?" He asked, "Just now."

"That cell has compromised everything you believe in, it turned forgiveness and mercy into judgement. The world is a different place when you're desperate."

He left no food or water, just the heat of a few torches until they burned out.

* * *

II.

* * *

"What if he never comes back?" Mokuba whispered, voice shaking.

It had been a full day since Pegasus departed and his throat trembled at the warning not to share water. Seto watched him, stretching an arm through the bars when the guards left and rolling over one of the twelve he had stockpiled in case something like this happened.

"Don't worry about what he does." He replied, trying to think through the parting words. _The world is a different place when you're desperate._

Was this how he planned to drive them to desperation next? Starving or thirsting to death?

"It's my fault." Yugi said from the opposite end of the hall.

"Save it Mutou, he was going to keep us down here no matter how you answered. You bought us all the time he was willing to give."

Mokuba took the water to put in the shadows where the guards wouldn't see, but couldn't bring himself to open it.

"So that's it, we're just givin' up?" Joey demanded, wrapping his jacket tighter around himself.

"We're looking at facts."

"Right," Tristan replied, "And the fact is, every soul Pegasus traps makes that eye of his stronger. It doesn't make sense for us to be in this prison when that one serves him better."

Mokuba shivered, pressing his hands to his mouth and breathing warmth into them to stay rooted in the present. The flash of gold behind his closed eyes wasn't real; he wasn't blind in the darkness. The voices he could hear belonged to people, not monsters.

"I can't go back there Niisama."

"You won't kid, I won't let that happen." But it still begged the question: why hadn't it?

Why were they here?

"What if this is bigger than Pegasus?" Ryou asked, "He said we stole from him but none of us took anything, it's not about the title, and he has the puzzle _and_ the ring now. If someone was threatening Pegasus like he's threatening us now, Yugi winning the tournament could be the reason he's keeping us down here. Maybe the people threatening him think, maybe they're supposed to think we're…"

"Dead?" Seto finished with a scoff. "Unlikely. He'd have no reason to go through the guise and attention of a tournament if that were the case. He has better ways of getting rid of people."

"But it makes sense, what if he got the idea to take someone hostage because they took someone from him? Like…like that woman in the dining hall."

The mention of her snagged the edge of a memory, something about a tower and having seen too much. Tea pressed a hand to her forehead and wished for more water to wipe away the grime. It wasn't a perfect theory, but at least one that offered some hope. They could help if Pegasus was being threatened.

"Even if that were true, it doesn't explain him not using the eye to keep us locked up…unless those people wanted to see us like this." Tristan cut in.

Mokuba sobbed, and it was Joey's voice that carried the sharp and clear 'enough!' through the empty corridors while Seto tried to soothe him.

All the elder Kaiba could think about as he brushed his brother's fingertips was _"…this is where I want you."_

* * *

III.

* * *

They spun hypothetical conversations in their sleep: ploys to get out of the dungeon and into the castle, bargains to live in the cave of plastic bones and stone mazes, anything but filth and cold.

His lips stuck together when he came back to himself, tongue dry and swollen. When he tried to sit up the room moved as if underwater, flowing around his limbs in a dizzying aura. He gripped and couldn't find traction, cursed when he brushed something solid. But the word stuck to his throat, parched.

He bit his lip, listening as Mokuba carefully broke the seal on the water bottle, and squinted through the darkness to watch him drink. Good. If he took just a few sips at set intervals, he could get by on half a bottle a day, skipping every other. Mokuba could have ten of the twelve bottles and however long the remaining two left Seto coherent, he would be grateful.

He had promised himself he'd be more than that: alert, calculating, opportunistic, but there was nothing of interest down here. The guards were too close for him to try and knock a torch down with his shirt. Many times he ran through the motions of whittling it down with his fingers, breaking his nails to the flesh and sucking blood from the tips of his fingers before moving on. He could get it narrow enough to fit into the keyhole, listen for the tumblers and grooves of the lock.

"Careful now, Kaiba, thoughts like that will put you down a few more levels, in irons." Pegasus settled a length of chain along his palm, letting it sway with the motion of his footsteps. He dropped the shackles in front of Ryou's cell and fished for a key, snapping his fingers to bring the torches to life.

Seto made a mental note to figure out how they worked, but first scanned the ground to see if Pegasus had brought more water. Light reflected harshly at the leftmost angle of his cell. Foil packaging. Food.

They had run through a thousand hypotheticals but now that he was before their eyes, none of them could bring themselves to speak. From the stone cot at the back of his cell, Mokuba whimpered.

"I must admit, you have the most _intriguing_ imaginations." He found the key he wanted and pinched it between two fingers, using his free hand to pass Yugi two bottles of water and a protein bar.

He moved down the row slowly, offering to Tea, Tristan, and Joey.

At the end of the row, leaving Seto, Mokuba, and the empty cell, he flashed his equally empty hands. "I warned you about sharing what you were given."

Seto grit his teeth and forced his clenched jaw to cooperate, "I made him take it, he never asked."

Pegasus quirked an eyebrow, "Oh yes, Kaiba-boy, you forced him alright. How far can you reach again?" He stood with his profile to both Seto and Mokuba, reaching an arm out in front of him and stretching his fingers. "Don't insult me."

He turned back toward the guards that had clustered at the mouth of the corridor and tossed the ring of keys to the one in front of Ryou's cell.

"Just him." He said, and waited for the door to screech open.

* * *

IV.

* * *

Ryou huddled under the hot stream of water and let the steam fill him up, spilling over and into him. Predictable chaos. He scratched the dirt from his arms and chest when the washcloth proved too soft and watched the residue circle the drain. His hair was streaked brown and gray the first three times he washed it, and by the fourth his arms ached.

He focused on the condensation overtaking the glass shower door, tracing 'help' a dozen times before smearing it away with a palm.

No one was coming to his rescue.

A guard knocked and the water turned cold, drawing a sharp gasp as he scrambled to turn it off.

It cut so deep he clutched the scars from the ring in his chest and imagined them ripped open, blood pouring from the stab wounds every time he blinked. He grabbed the wrong knob, cutting off the minimal heat he had left and replacing it with a stronger, more frigid spray, like liquid nitrogen. Water pooled on his lashes and blurred his vision, fingers frantically turning left, then right, until the terrible thunder of water on porcelain died down to nothing.

The man beyond the door was talking to him but he couldn't make out the words. He let his head fall against the remains of his plea – 'help' – and told himself the swelling of his mother's brain against her skull, Amane's cheek spattered with blood and glass, wasn't real.

But he could hear sirens like screams in the night.

Their voices used to fuel the flashbacks, but Dad had erased the messages on their old machine, throwing it away in place of a sleek, black mobile phone he never used.

He'd forgotten what they sounded like.

His own mother.

His baby sister.

The click of the door stopped the sob in his throat and he watched as a hanger was slid onto the handle.

"You have five minutes to get dressed kid."

It shut with too much force and Ryou jumped, pressing one foot at a time against the soft, woven bathmat. For some reason it convinced him the trip back down to stone dungeons was closer than he expected, so he dried off quickly, barely bothering with his hair aside from wringing the ends out with his hands, and put on the clothes he'd been given.

He didn't wait to be called; instead braving a step into the lavish hall where four men awaited him, one taking his arm to march him forward.

Walking through a castle with crown molding in a sweat suit and bare feet, he felt worse than a criminal. The cold of the dungeon snaked its way around him and he pulled at the collar of the crewneck top like it would loosen further. Three of the four men closed in behind him and the negative space glowing distantly with his sister's curls was filled with the clamor of their shoes. He pulled in a breath and let them steer him to the dining hall.

Pegasus's gaze loomed and he was suddenly more conscious of the damp spot his hair left at back of his neck. He settled into one of the chairs, sixteen, and counted the empty spaces between him and Pegasus at the head of the table. The energy lingering at the front of his head was hot, rather than give it something to burn through, he focused on the water seeping through his shirt.

Drip.

"Hello Bakura."

He split his name into three syllables and Ryou was never so conscious of how foreign it sounded in his mother tongue. "Sir." He said with a nod.

His nervous energy was tangible, so much that Pegasus's confidence stomped it out like the dust still clumped beneath his fingernails. He'd bitten and peeled them back, but glanced at them anyway.

Drip.

"You must feel like a new person."

Ryou took his meaning: aren't you glad you're clean?

He bit his lip. "I – thank you, I do."

"I'm glad; you know people sometimes get the wrong impression. I'm quite a gracious host when the situation calls for it."

Ryou focused on trying to guess Pegasus's age so he wouldn't talk too much. The faint lines around his eyes slid away unnaturally, like drinks spilled on couches with plastic slip covers.

"Thank you, really."

Pegasus leaned forward, his elbow barely grazing the table when he brought his wine to his lips, "It's very important that we're able to be honest with each other, don't you think?"

Drip.

"O-Of course." He replied hurriedly, "I'll answer anything I can."

"Did you think I was lying when I told you, you stole from me?"

He stammered for a moment, never as thirsty as he was watching Pegasus savor his wine, veiling his face behind the glass, "No, I just don't understand what it could be. I haven't taken anything."

"If you can't see what's missing, you're not looking hard enough."

Ryou's eyes widened, darting away from Pegasus's to scrutinize the dining hall. "If you could just tell me, I'm sure-"

The darkness crept in like a cloud passing over the sun, stealing its heat as it shone in through the window.

Drip.

"You'll understand," Pegasus repeated – he was so tired of repeating himself – "with time."

"Thank you for giving it to me."

The heat rushed forward to swallow him and the coroner closed Amane's listless eyes, blood on the edge of her right eyelashes, vanquishing it. Ryou could feel the pressure of the fingers pressed to her upper lids, but not their warmth. For a second, despite the stream of gold flaring from Pegasus's eye, there was only blackness.

Water crawled down his spine.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Pegasus's voice broke through the coroner's grip, bringing him back to the dining hall. "Baby steps, Bakura, baby steps."

A guard set down a plate of food while he asked himself if the dream – had it been a daydream – meant Pegasus would be the death of him.

* * *

V.

* * *

Once he'd stowed Ryou on the main level, he made the cold descent to the dungeon. Five of his six guests were free of their cells but not of the two men at each of their backs. Their hands were cuffed behind them and Joey had a set around his ankles that meant he would have to shuffle instead of walk. If they hadn't calloused by now, the stone would cut his feet.

Pegasus almost laughed at the irony of a police officer's son being cautious, but Tristan stared at him like he might be analyzing, a sixteen year old kid playing hostage negotiator in his own head.

"Wait!" Tea cried, "Why are you separating us? What about Kaiba?"

The guards had entered Seto's cell just long enough to take the excess water, leaving him one bottle before retreating to safety on the other side of the bars. One man with tawny hair and young features had taken a hard hit to the cheekbone, the cracked remains of his sunglasses glistening in his hand as he caught them.

"What's the kid gonna do with shattered plastic?"

Croquet sent a hard glare to Seto, "Plenty if you don't pick it up."

Maybe she shouldn't have asked, but Pegasus must have expected them to fight. Even if he hadn't, why let Mokuba out when he'd never been above using him to hurt Seto?

"He's going to take a little time and think about what he's done." Pegasus replied from the fork in the corridor a few feet ahead.

"And Mokuba?" Yugi asked, almost reaching for him when his guards drug him to the opposite side.

Pegasus came into the light just enough that it hallowed out his face, turning his gaze to Mokuba, "Seto shared the water knowing it was wrong; by taking it you made yourself equally at fault. Had you stopped there you'd just be spending another week down here, but you didn't."

Mokuba's eyes welled with tears and he couldn't bring himself to look at Pegasus to beg, not with the millennium eye glaring down at him.

"You drank it, didn't you?"

When Mokuba didn't answer, he nodded for the guards to move Yugi and his friends along. Mokuba's screams echoed and Joey jerked his head back just long enough to see where the dragon head door lead.

Down.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yugioh, nor do I claim rights to any of the affiliated characters.

 **Warnings/Notes:** This chapter contains reference to bodily injury and distress, including description of wounds, blood, and ideologically sensitive material. Just another reminder that Pegasus's malice is _not_ sexual in nature.

* * *

I.

* * *

"Feeling adventurous this morning?" Pegasus asked as he flipped on the overhead light.

Yugi fell back against the barred window, an upgraded prison, and cast his eyes down. "I'm sorry; I just wanted to see the ocean." From this angle he could almost feel the breeze kicking up from the sea, smell the salted air and the foreign sweetness of tropical fruit. Pegasus knew exactly what he wanted and how harmless it was.

The door clicked closed behind him and the curling of a single finger moved Yugi back onto the unmade bed.

"I expect you to keep this room clean."

"Yes sir."

 _Don't sit down._

Pegasus set the paper plate of food on the unused half of the bed and smoothed a pillow case against his palm. "I didn't bring you up here for you to make the same mess of my castle you made of my dungeon."

Yugi swallowed down the horror and chased it with the same, instinctive thought.

 _Don't sit down._

Pegasus had kept them prisoner for three months without heat, running water, or electricity. If they could've helped the state of his dungeon, he wouldn't have scrubbed his hands raw trying to get the rest of himself clean. The spikes of his hair were still matted and Pegasus eyed a wooden hairbrush on the dresser across the room.

"I'll keep up with the cleaning. I can start right now, I just, you caught me as I was waking up and it's been a long time since I've seen outside."

 _Don't sit down._

Pegasus took a step away from the bed and Yugi held in the breath of relief as he slid the plate closer with careful fingers. It had been too long since he'd had warm, substantial food and his throat watered just looking at it, a terrible sign of hunger and nausea. He took a few hurried bites while there were no eyes on him and regretted it when they started to come back up. He turned his head back toward the window and pressed a hand over his mouth.

"One day you'll be able to walk that beach." Pegasus said, sitting down at Yugi's back, the shift in weight nearly sending the boy into his lap. "You know I'm only doing what's best for you, don't you?"

While Pegasus took a section of his hair to comb through, Yugi stared at the corner of the window that reflected a picture on the dresser. He hadn't seen it there before.

* * *

II.

* * *

"Long way down, huh?"

"More than the length of a few sheets, Little Mokuba could tell you that."

Pegasus closed the door, shutting out the guards stationed on either side with weapons in plain view. Tristan didn't turn around to greet him or accept the food; he didn't need to see them to know they were there. But the mention of Mokuba made him shudder and suddenly his desperation when they first met made so much more sense. He'd been trapped here the longest and deserved it the least. He wondered if this hell was better than the one the eye sealed him in.

"He's just a kid you know."

Pegasus left the paper plate on the dresser. "What does that make you?"

He took another moment to watch the sleet come down against the glass, melting on impact, before turning around. "My family doesn't have any money; you don't gain anything from keeping me here."

Pegasus chuckled, making a sweeping motion about the room with both arms, "I have more than I could ever spend, but you know that already. Come now Tristan, it'll take more than a brave face and a little detective work to crack me."

Something about the way the smirk touched his eyes before his lips put Tristan too on edge. He pulled his lips in for a moment and scanned the food as a distraction. Pancakes, fruit, and a plastic fork, a bottle of water off to the side.

"If you're going to finish me off, just do it."

The question was much easier to answer in its original form, but he didn't pose it to the boy as he meant it. _Are you going to hurt me?_

Pegasus cocked his head to the side, a curtain of silver hair falling almost out of his face. "You put on a man's shoes this morning," he taunted, taking a menacing step forward. "Give me a reason."

* * *

III.

* * *

He took his time walking through the halls to shake the adrenaline. It was just as well Joey caused too much trouble to be rewarded with food or attention. If he'd faced him, he might have given the boy exactly what he wanted: a one-way ticket to check on Mokuba.

Testing the temperature of Tea's plate with the hand underneath it, he knocked twice on her door. He entered at her word and left breakfast on the dresser, taking in the immaculate space that stretched out before him.

She had vacuumed and wiped the khaki walls. There were indents in the carpet where she'd failed to move the furniture back exactly as she'd found it – her thoughts indicated lack of strength rather than thinly veiled snooping, but she might have been good with diversion – and the wood had all been polished, thoroughly.

"I don't think I've ever seen it this clean." He said, meeting her timid eyes, "Did you even sleep?"

Her smile was exhausted, "Not much." She replied honestly.

Where was the determined young woman who drove him from Little Yugi's mind not so long ago? Where was the unwavering conviction that put her in an arena, a dueling novice against renowned semi-finalist Mai Valentine?

Not gone, and certainly not forgotten.

He made a mental note to staff her second guard, same as the others. "Don't get your days and nights mixed up."

She nodded, gaze on the window. A probe of her mind revealed no thoughts of escape but a vague knot of fear, like gray scribbled lines he couldn't place.

"How are the others?" She asked softly.

"The same as you," He replied, "enjoying the view."

All at once the fear had a name and a face. For the first time since entering, closing the door, scrutinizing her work, he looked at her. Her hair was wet, lank and straight in its usual part and a bit longer than he remembered. He only noticed in the way she brushed her bangs to the side to keep them out of her eyes, wishing anything but idly that they covered more of her face. Hid her.

She glanced his way out of politeness but didn't hold his eyes, letting her gaze wander back to the window and her breathing slow as she watched the sleet come down. She was fully clothed in the sweat suit they all wore a color variation of, hers pale blue, but shivered as if he was undressing her.

As if he'd walked his usual pace, arrived a few minutes earlier, and barged in without knocking. Happened upon a towel-clad silhouette scrambling behind a half-closed bathroom door. She kneaded the comforter in and out of her fists nervously, fidgeting like she shouldn't mess up the bed she'd made, and remade, and remade.

Gray scribbled lines. Fear ebbing out in a dozen little tics he didn't watch close enough to commit to memory. She felt his eyes on her even when they were across the room, nose turned to the faint smell of artificial lemon that was her bathroom cleaner.

"Would you like me to keep the door open?"

She froze, hand half curled around the comforter, and turned to look at him with her lips trembling. It came back to her, a thought so obvious the eye barely gleamed – _he can read my mind_ – and as she forced out the words she started to cry.

Fear with a name and a face. His own.

She said, "I'm so sorry."

But the words engraving themselves on her closed bedroom door as he left were: _what am I supposed to think?_

* * *

IV.

* * *

Seto paced the three free walls of his cell from corner to corner, using the repetition to track time. Pegasus didn't rush down and any gratitude he might have had for that vanished with the thought of Mokuba's screams. Too many hours to think meant plenty of time to get desperate, which was exactly what Pegasus wanted.

When the torch lit itself – on a timer, he realized, the elder guard patrolling the dungeon kept a remote next to his gun – he waited impatiently (front right corner, front left corner, back left corner) for Crawford to appear. Pegasus forcing them to live in filth was once made easier by knowing he'd be routinely subjected to it, but now, as he took several too-long minutes to adjust to the smell, Seto could only curse it.

 _Come on, Crawford, you're better than this. You threw an eleven year old down a wormhole to hell, a little shit doesn't make you that squeamish._

"I take time out of my busy schedule to come down here and _that's_ the first thing you have to say to me? Such a shame considering all that's on the line."

Seto ran his tongue over his teeth and debated, "I'm thirsty." He said.

Don't play into it.

Don't make a request.

Just keep him down here.

"You've been living on half a bottle a day, get a drink."

Seto came further into the light, hands in his pockets to hold in some warmth. "Why did you come down?"

"To get an apology."

"I'm sorry." He replied with no hesitation. It needed to be said, desperate or not.

Pegasus chuckled and tapped the protein bar against the palm of his hand, "But not because you deliberately disobeyed me or assaulted my men." He said, "In fact, if Little Mokuba hadn't gotten caught in the crossfire, you'd have done a better job of making your blows count, wouldn't you? What was the first thought you had when Noland drug you off him? Oh, yes, how easy it would have been for you to snap his neck."

He took a step closer, his forehead almost touching the cool metal between the two of them. "What do you think now, Seto? How much force would it take for you to just –" he held his hands around one of the rods and turned them swiftly, one over the other, "twist?"

"You knew I wouldn't go quietly the first time I escaped your men."

"Don't change the subject."

Pegasus took a step back and he tracked the movement by the stretch of his shadow in the dim light. "You're asking me to be sorry about fighting for my life."

"Please, Kaiba-boy, if I wanted you dead, you would be."

"There are a lot of things worse than death." Seto replied with a flare of resentment, "I'm talking about the life I built, my company, my technology, my family. You're asking for an apology you'll never accept."

Pegasus's hands tensed at his sides for the briefest of moments, "Ah, now we're getting somewhere. It would be insane to think you'd quietly submit to me stealing your entire life."

Seto caught himself stepping back and refused to be made the villain in whatever sick mind game Pegasus was trying to pull. "If you were on the other side of these bars, you'd do the same thing I did."

Pegasus's lips fell into a cool, neutral line across his face and he glanced back in the direction he came, "Rest assured, Seto, I would do much worse."

The heat of Pegasus's expression became the ash of Gozaburo's cigar, riding crop ripping into his flesh over half-healed wounds, the cold cackle stuck somewhere in unyielding silence, "I'm sorry." Seto croaked.

Pegasus started back through the row of cells.

"Pegasus – I'm sorry!"

"Oh, I _believe_ you."

"You're never going to believe me!" He yelled, voice shaking.

 _I'd do much worse._

Pegasus was already at the mouth of the corridor, shoulders rising and falling on a breath, "I'm getting closer." He replied.

 _Mokuba…_

 _Please, not Mokuba_.

The torch went out.

* * *

V.

* * *

Mokuba couldn't speak through the shivers, wracking his body and making any movement useless. Pegasus used a flashlight to guide his way down and when the first sliver of light snagged his vision, the boy's breaths became desperate gulps of air.

 _Don't cry, please don't cry._

"Have we had enough time to think, Little Mokuba?"

He sobbed, head throbbing violently enough to force his brain out through his temples.

Everything burned: his fingertips and his ears, the breath in his lungs.

When he finally got cold enough to start going numb, the guard would bring a torch of real flame and its agonizing heat. Mokuba's bare feet rattled against the stone floor, the force of his sobs emphasizing the shivers.

There were dozens of cells down here but he was lying in a corridor, soaked through from his head to his thighs. The water valve above him dripped ominously and he shrieked, trying desperately to scoot away from it. His feet weren't bound but his arms were secured to his sides by rope, its rough length tightening his every breath. Pegasus shone the flashlight at his feet and Mokuba jumped at the silhouette of his face, the momentum knocking him on his side. A guard bent down to sit him up, twisting his hair around a fist so his chin was less than an inch from the pipe.

His breathing picked up, vision spotting before plunging him into sweet, blissful oblivion.

Pegasus waited for him to come back to himself, mentally replaying the footage of Noland holding Mokuba down while Kemo ran the water. He thrashed, soaking his upper body and shivering at the flood, like knives piercing him without pause or relief. Every desperate plea downed out, coughing and sputtering as he got a second – just a second – of sweet reprieve from the flow. His lungs contracted painfully in his chest, forcefully arching his back from the stone to try and draw breath as he suffocated.

Pegasus waved the guard away and when his head lolled suddenly forward, Mokuba came to.

"Now Mokuba, are we going to drink the _water?_ "

* * *

VI.

* * *

He dreamt his mother's voice an octave too high, in an unfamiliar lilt. Her 'r's didn't end on a breath or blend seamlessly into the next word. The syllables were clipped and sharp, like teeth, but never piecing. They blanketed him against ever-pressing thoughts of death and when the guttural cry of darkness sounded it was barely an echo over her words, like talons trailing over cloth and leaving nothing but the soft kiss of cotton.

As his eyelids fluttered against sleep he could almost convince himself he was on her lap again, licking the strawberry jam of her thumbprint cookies off a finger.

" _It'll be okay, Ryou. I won't let anything happen to you."_

But she had.

Dad was home less after her passing than he had been when they were all together. He never even alternated Christmases like he used to: one year home, the next year working. He sent souvenirs with hastily scribbled letters that became notes that became tags.

To: Ryou.

From: Dad.

As the words got shorter, sloppier, Ryou told himself his father was bargaining with time. Eventually his next "crucial breakthrough" would be the last, and all the seconds he saved moving toward his goal instead of writing Ryou a few words would be worth it. He used to cover paper with numbers: those twenty seconds he'd have taken to write 'hope you enjoy this' were instead spent hunched over an important artifact. Twenty seconds here and there added up to half a lifetime of Dad all to himself. No work, no planes, no blueprints.

Having him show up on his birthday – his _actual_ birthday, not the Saturday that followed – was like a dream. He held out an old wooden box and Ryou took it gingerly, his fingers shaking around the lip of the lid.

"I'm so sorry I can't stay, champ. The plane to Somalia leaves in two hours and I'm already late getting through security. I know you're going to love it; I picked it out just for you. Take good care of it, okay?"

He remembered the next few moments in vivid detail.

The pause between them as the world broke, Dad looking over him instead of at him, brushing wrinkles from his sleeves and settling a hand in his hair. He could feel the words on his lips – _you get that mane from your mother_ – but he never said it. He never talked about either of them anymore.

The swell of hesitance and guilt in his chest, filling him up until he thought it would split his ribcage in half.

The split second of desperation when his lips parted and his eyes welled and he _almost_ cried for his father not to go.

The soft set of Dad's lips as he bent to kiss his head, leaving without another word.

He managed to get a 'thank you' out before the door closed, and hated, even today, that it wasn't 'I love you.'

That night had been the beginning of the end.

It marked the last time Dad gave him a gift in-person. The last time he called him champ. The last time he kissed his forehead or laid a hand in his hair. Looking back, it was the last time he touched Ryou without thinking it through first, calculating the safest place and length of time to lay a finger on him so his brittle-voiced son wouldn't break.

He turned over in bed but couldn't force himself to wake from what he knew was a dream. He stacked memories against his mother as if to calculate her penance for going back on such comforting words, and offering them now in her new voice. Why was her voice so new?

He slipped back into memories.

The ring wasn't attached to a chain but a length of leather he gripped hesitantly, pulling the gleaming artifact from its case half an inch at a time. It turned the tears on his cheeks frigid and muted the repeated 'thank yous' his father could no longer hear.

 _Take good care of it, okay?_

He slipped it around his neck like a noose, letting the metal fall against his shirt and flinching when it burned him through the fabric. He needed to get it off but couldn't make himself grab the ring itself, the ominous spikes floating of their own accord. He pulled futilely at the leather but the ring levitated at the touch of his hands, its spires all pointing straight down, leather stretched too taut to move an inch.

He pulled in a strangled breath, halfway through a prayer. The spikes drove themselves into his chest between the very vents of the ribcage he'd almost split open asking for his father.

Blood pooled through the singed puncture marks in his shirt, staining it red and crawling down his stomach, along his sides. He screamed against the pain, each hot spike twisting deeper into his flesh.

"Mama!" He shrieked, the sob cut off sharply as he twisted to get free, leather wrapping tighter around his throat. "Ma – ma – help – me!"

For the first time in six months he recalled her voice, unmarred by the new accent, as she pulled him back from death. Cradling him into reality and stroking the blood from his hair. It never transferred to her fingers. Her fingers never held any weight.

He woke to splinters of the wooden box on the living room floor and a message from the new headmaster on their answering machine – a month later Dad would throw it out while he was in class and never speak of it again – reminding him to register for school. He peeled his ruined shirt back and sat in the shower with no energy to wash, watching the water go pink with his blood. He touched each, individual hole in his chest. A patch of dark purple-gray, scarred, like he'd had them for years.

"What do you mean you won't let anything happen to me?"He asked as the memory faded to darkness.

 _You're too late!_ He thought, but couldn't bring himself to say it.

He woke to a windowless room, pitch black and shapeless. Only the weight of his eyelids told the difference of being asleep or awake. He felt for a lamp beside the bed and fumbled with the chain. As he gripped it he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember his mother's voice from the dream.

Nothing.

He took a deep breath through his nose and closed them tighter, bowing his head with the effort. Even the new woman - not mother, but with soothing words like she might have been someone's - didn't come back to him.

The first sob came and he pressed his lips together to keep it from spilling out. Over and over they pulled up from his chest, spilling blood from old wounds into his gut. He imagined the tears staining his face red, and when he opened his mouth in a desperate, screaming cry, it bubbled in his throat, spattering his teeth.

"Why did you go?" He howled.

 _I didn't mean it –_

"Why did you go?"

Laying on the floor, screaming for Mama while the neighbors closed their blinds, shutting out his grief like a disease spread by eye contact.

"Please!"

The light came on overhead and Pegasus approached, leaving his post at the wall by the door. The only thoughts the eye picked up against the interference of a demonic laugh were in Cecelia's voice.

 _I won't let anything happen to you._

And the constant, quieting stream from Ryou's mouth, "Please don't leave me. Ple-ee-ease, don't leave me."

He came around the side of the bed, sinking into the mattress and pulling Ryou up against the headboard, sitting reclined instead of lying down.

"It's okay now." He said, anger melting into anguish. "It's okay, Ryou, you were only dreaming." He pressed a hand to his cheek, patting once, twice, "It was only a dream. It's alright."

But it wasn't, and neither were they.

The worst had already happened.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh, nor do I claim rights to any of the affiliated characters.

Warnings/Notes: Profanity, reference to bodily injury and distress.

* * *

I.

* * *

For the next week Seto's visits were two words long.

He only spoke them once.

They exchanged empty bottles and foil wrappers for fresh food and water, and as he broke the seal without checking it – the illusion of trust, clever boy – he demanded, didn't ask, what he could do.

"Tell me –" And the rest was unimportant. Pegasus folded his hands in his lap and left.

It wasn't so much the phrasing as the motive behind it. All of Seto's orders were begging to his ears, what else could they be in a cage? But something about the way he looked at him, the desperate determination he'd honed overnight, was too familiar. He knew it for what it was, or would be, if he let it.

In the days that followed, Seto assumed his words did him in and resolved not to talk, merely nodding his thanks and looking down as if to adjust to the glare of the light rather than the weight of Pegasus's eyes. In those moments he might as well have been screaming it. Like being fifteen years old and infatuated, every pointedly placed word dripping with star-struck wonder.

Even his thoughts reverberated.

 _Tell me_ (what to do.)

 _Tell me_ (why we're here.)

 _Tell me_ (how to get to him.)

Pegasus always answered the same way, "Time will tell us all we need to know from each other."

Because getting pulled into the trap of Seto's conversation, mental of otherwise, wasn't the soft mesh of net blanketing him with pleas: "let Mokuba go, he only did what I told him to, his blame is mine, it's always been mine."

It was the bone snapping crunch of metal. Two words bleeding into stories of who they were, what they'd done, what was done _to_ them. Aching testimonials deciding whose pain had sharper teeth.

If Pegasus told him, told him, told him, Seto would latch onto the story, turn it around, and say, "You should have said so sooner. I understand and I'm sorry but Mokuba is all I have, aren't we the same? Hasn't this made us the same? I shouldn't have hit him but if you had a chance to, if you could have –"

And Seto would stop, understand, but not before he made so good a point that Pegasus was convinced - after all this _work_ – to let them go.

That's why Seto was dangerous; he was nothing if not persuasive.

* * *

II.

* * *

"So what happens now?" Tristan asked, nursing an orange slice. The juice made his fingers sticky and reminded him that his days were measured in showers and sweat suits.

"That all depends on you." Pegasus replied. Tristan started to bow his head in the fight not to roll his eyes before Pegasus caught his chin with a finger, redirecting his gaze. It was the man's breath on his cheek, he knew, but sometimes he imagined the golden eye taking him up in smoke.

"What do you want from me?" He shrugged out of the touch, bunching the already wrinkled comforter on the bed as he slid further away.

"You tell me."

All of his captive's emotions snaked around him in different places. Tristan's confusion routinely anchored itself in his right foot, swinging in an almost nervous habit over his left leg. The boy had caught on, but didn't understand.

"How can I do better if I don't know what you want?"

Pegasus stood, chuckling. "This isn't a courtroom drama; you think you can hide your true questions behind this thinly veiled nonsense? You're never getting out; this castle is your entire world. There is no life outside these walls for you."

There had been life inside them?

Tristan caught the thought too late, like fingertips grazing the string of a beloved balloon before the wind took it.

The door slammed and his body connected hard a second later, "Please, I didn't mean it like that!" He rapped on the wood with both hands, "I'll give you a chance!"

"Anything you're giving out that easy isn't worth having."

The locks – too many – slid into place.

He went back to the window and pulled at the bars until his fingers bled.

* * *

III.

* * *

Even the background lull of the Funny Bunny theme song couldn't drown out Tristan's desperate cries. He beat his fists against the wall, slid the mattress off the bed for the twelfth time to check underneath it, pacing until he tired of counting the steps. Pegasus walked two halls before finally coming to the great room, watching the tricky hare congeal itself into a hole the size of a dime.

He wondered, crossing the too-large estate, how long it would take for Tristan to make puddles of his bones trying to get out. He stopped at Tea's door and closed his eyes for a long moment searching for another presence, as if the window to Tristan's thoughts was actually a two-way mirror and the boy had snuck in with a combination code like the one he was using to unlock Tea's door.

The cries stopped with one look at the room: spotless, unyielding.

For the first time in ten years the nagging call of his mother said, "Take off your shoes, you'll muddy the carpet!"

But mother was gone, just like…

He shut the door with too much force and Tea jumped, pressing a hand to her racing heart as she stumbled to her feet.

"Sorry, I didn't hear you come in." She tried to cover it up but he could feel her pulse reach a roaring height as he stepped closer – _what am I supposed to think_ – "How are you?"

He glanced down at the carpet like his shoes had left horrible, brown prints in his wake. They hadn't of course, it was his carpet, his home, and his generosity keeping them locked in it. _They_ were the only ones painting blood on their doorways like some present day Passover. He patted the pocket that held Solomon's soul and couldn't help the thought, _but you weren't passed over, were you? The only mercy here is mine._

"Did I spill something? I can clean it up."

"Sit." Pegasus said, watching her sink down onto the mattress immediately, eyes trained to the spot his own had been fixated on too long, "I brought your lunch."

She took it with hands that were too careful, like she was talking herself out of tearing the paper in half and letting the flood fly everywhere.

"What are those?" She asked quietly, finally moving her gaze to the books in his other hand.

"Physics textbooks, you should learn."

She bit her tongue as she met his eyes, forcing herself not to ask why. "Thank you, but I'm not that great with science."

"Tea-dear, you'll have to find new challenges in place of your passions." _You'll certainly never see Broadway._ "Otherwise you'll just…waste away."

* * *

IV.

* * *

There was pain scribbled across Joey's face, lips taut, eyes mimicking them, an expression too distant to cut. The sentiment was razor sharp but buried behind a thousand words the boy had been saving for this day.

Pegasus closed the door, letting himself into his own room in his own castle, and put the paper plate down with a dull skid on the wooden dresser. It was just cut fruit and a peanut butter sandwich, but he imagined grease seeping through, clear and wet, unlike the thick black that stained Joey's nails in his father's failing garage, unlike the still-caked dirt of the dungeon that is almost – almost, almost – the same color.

"Hello Joseph."

The blond inclined his head.

"You've done nothing but throw things around since I brought you up here." Pegasus said, flicking a nail against the cap of the water bottle repeatedly, "Surely you can manage a hello."

He blinked once, slowly and deliberately, as he turned to face Pegasus. The pain was back and anger stirred with it, low enough that Joey swallowed it down. Pegasus watched it travel his throat and wondered if it burned. No, it wasn't that superficial.

"You live alone out here?"

Pegasus glanced back toward the door and the two guards stationed beyond it. "Just the birds and the fish." He replied.

"Sounds lonely."

"The world is a lonely place without the right people."

Pegasus watched Joey's fingers curl at his sides and knew from the first moment that his hurt would not be subtle. "Or with the wrong people."

"Bravo," Pegasus replied, crossing the room to sit down, "That almost hurt."

The disappointment on Joey's face was vaguely reminiscent of panic and Pegasus realized his old enemies, schoolyard bullies and tattooed gangs, must have been very easily wounded.

* * *

V.

* * *

It shouldn't have surprised him that best friends were his worst company, but Little Yugi's mood was abysmal. He stared at the overcast morning through the window, stagnant and trying not to breathe. Pegasus could hear him miming the same thought he hadn't stopped repeating from his first day in the room.

 _Don't come in._

 _Don't sit down._

"Are you trying to chase me away?" The boy jumped, cold fingers leaving ugly smudges on the glass. "That would be absolutely boring for you, wouldn't it? Who would bring your food and water? Who would share charming stories of the outside world? Just the other day a bird paid me a visit as I sat on the balcony, you know. They don't migrate from the island for winter."

At least Pegasus hadn't mentioned Christmas. Yugi wondered if it had come and gone by now, or if they were still a handful of days away. It hardly mattered. For the first time since meeting Tea, and eventually the rest of the gang, the holiday was as meaningless as his wishes on shooting stars. Far-off pleas to end the loneliness that had choked him from the time he could recognize it.

For some reason, Pegasus's expression held the dull vacancy of his mother's eyes as she walked away from him, too small to have been able to remember being left to cry. She stayed in the bathroom so she wouldn't break in front of him, twirling the phone cord around her hand and dialing her own mother's number just to hear her voice.

Yugi wondered how he knew that – if he had just invented it to make his own loneliness more bearable.

"If you're going to be a lawn ornament, you're just as useful in the dungeon."

Even Yugi's snap to attention was stalled and tired. "I'm sorry." He said on a breath, "How are the others?"

It took too much willpower not to visibly suck his teeth.

 _I've given you everything you have, your warmth, your health, your food and water, and that's the first question out of your mouth?_

"Grateful." He replied pointedly. _Which is more than I can say for you._ "Tell me more about Joseph."

"Joey?" Yugi asked, sitting on the far corner of the bed. "What about him?"

"You must have something interesting to say, after all, you seem intent on not talking about either of us." He passed over a bottle of water and Yugi took it, realization settling in. He was screwing up while saying nothing at all, and it was too late to back-track.

"He's the strongest of all of us, I think, he just doesn't believe it." He shifted uncomfortably, like he shouldn't be saying even that much. Like having opinions was wrong and voicing them was liable to make the sky cave in. "People underestimate him. They think all he's good for is fighting with his fists, but the truth is he had to get good at it. There wasn't a choice. Anything else he put his heart into, no one took him seriously for."

"Your Grandfather included."

Yugi's face hardened at the comment and Pegasus almost didn't hide the smirk.

 _Good._

"Gramps was just teasing him, he believes in Joey just like I do. He's the one who taught me to see the good in people. He means everything to me."

"How cruel it is that things change, Yugi-boy." Pegasus stood and wiped the smudge from the window with a handkerchief from his pocket, "You'll learn from his naivety."

* * *

VI.

* * *

Ryou's eyes were too soft when he entered. Pegasus imagined the water pooling there melting them like chocolate in a child's warm hand.

"Thirsty?" He asked, cracking the seal of Ryou's water bottle while he stared at it.

The too-pale boy shook his head, "No, thank you." The condensation crawling down Pegasus's wrist was salty like Yugi's tears. Ryou could taste it as it fell to the floor, seeping into the carpet. Just like he could hear Yugi's sobs from four halls over, which might as well have been half a world away.

He glanced nervously around the room like the surroundings might change, four walls stretching out to encompass the entire world. He could fit Paris in here if he tried hard enough. It was always Dad's favorite, and Pegasus's French accent when he introduced certain foods was uncannily accurate. He wondered if he was a native who had just acclimated really well to American culture. It wasn't like he had to put much effort into fooling people as a recluse on a private island.

But those thoughts were dangerous. At any moment Pegasus might decide he wasn't as trustworthy as he'd been deemed after the breakdown – what had he said between sobs that convinced the man so thoroughly? – and start reading his mind.

"You seem distracted, did you have another dream?"

He was doing it again, inviting closeness with their bodies at a distance and the pang of hurt filling Ryou's chest wouldn't quiet down. He shook his head so they wouldn't have to talk about it but knew better than to think that would be enough.

"Always the same one," He clarified, and waited a beat before asking, "Do you think it's possible to tell time by how badly you miss someone?" He swallowed thickly, "Someone you can't get back."

Pegasus's body lost its weight, only registering breaths pulling in and out without his consent. He almost pressed a hand to his chest to stop it from rising and falling, to take his vision and the white haired boy in front of it, halt the earth on its axis, cut off like a switch.

Gone.

Why did he think he could do this? Take seven people who had been his undoing and raise them to understand their wrongs. Suddenly there were too many sounds beyond cartoon theme songs and ticking clocks. Voices with names and faces, names and faces he could call and feel. There was flesh and blood around their bones, and when he touched them they were warm. Their hearts still beat. Their eyes didn't just open and close, they watered. They squeezed shut so tight their faces wrinkled into cracks, muscle and sinew spilling out through fresh, smooth skin. Ryou's nails were bloody from being chewed back too far and if he touched the red gush it would stick like tacky paint.

For so long he put these seven people into seven cells into seven days and everything made _sense_.

Everything had _order_.

Nothing had really _changed_ , yet.

At the core they had been seven little bodies waiting until they'd learned their lessons, like characters on canvas, stowed away in boxes until the time was right. Even when they questioned his timing, beat their fists, cried with real voices, rippling the façade like static cracking through holograms at his touch, fleshless, he could forgive them.

But they had brought families and feelings they should have left behind. They had no right to anguish as the cause of his, and yet here they were taking his sentience, making their own more dominant.

Ryou's question cut deep, a not-so-subtle reminder that he had stolen human beings, and that these human beings had stolen from him. It wasn't as simple as feeding them at the right time and keeping the blood flowing through their bodies.

Human beings weren't good or bad, they were needful and hungry.

If he knew the right way to starve them – and he did – they would shape up quickly, but he had forgotten until this moment that he was famished himself.

"You know…" He said, reaching out as he took a dazed step forward, "Something inside us is the same."

He didn't just want them to need him; he wanted to need them, too.

* * *

VII.

* * *

The world fluttered behind his lashes: blurred lights dissolving into the screech of monitors. If screams had rhythm, that's what they'd sound like. Mokuba sat up, wincing as his wrist caught on the rough metal of a handcuff. He tried to pull in a breath and choked on it, wet cough like nails shredding his chest.

His free hand pressed to the side of his head and he blinked heavily, trying to force his vision to cooperate. It snagged on a bright, orange bag: D.

Was this…a dream?

Tears prickled at the corner of his eyes and he whimpered against the coughs he couldn't hold his breath through any longer. His muscles cried out in pain, neck straining free of his shoulders straining free of his chest. He reached blindly through the glare of the light for a box of tissues that used to be on his end table. The rattle of the handcuff chain against the guardrail of a hospital bed reminded him: this wasn't his home, his room, or the right continent. He was a prisoner. Again.

He inhaled sharply and spit bloodied phlegm into the thin blanket before shrugging it away. His arm ached with the motion and he sniffed back the tears until he saw it.

IV.

Drip bag.

Drugs.

He jerked his right arm forward and cried out when the handcuff broke his skin, staining it purple where the blood tried to pool through. The fingers of his left hand couldn't reach far enough to rip the needle out.

"Please –" He rasped, blinking hard against the light to find the exit, "Please help me."

"The antibiotics are going to help you." Pegasus assured from a stool a few feet away.

Mokuba started to cry and could only cough.

When had he come in?

"Look at you, getting yourself all worked up like I'm going to hurt you."

He was up before Mokuba could respond and he squeezed his eyes shut, counting his hurried breaths and praying he wouldn't come closer.

"I'm sorry, I won't touch the water, I won't touch the water!"

"Shh, shh, shh…" A warm hand buried itself in his hair…Pegasus's hand. "I've forgiven all that, remember? But you'll have to stay here until I know you won't do anything else to hurt yourself." He took the soiled blanket by the edge Mokuba hadn't coughed in and dropped it into the garbage. "A few days of medicine and you'll be good as new." He dimmed the lights with a switch Mokuba couldn't see and held his chin in one hand, "You'll never go back there again, will you?" He whispered.

He shook his head against Pegasus's hold and tried to remind himself to breathe. "Never, ne-e-ver."

Pegasus slid the handcuff down a few inches until it fit snugly on Mokuba's forearm, turning his wrist over to examine the bruise. "Then I need you to listen very carefully to the rules of starting over." He moved Mokuba's pillows while the boy's eyes followed, straining against the edges of his peripheral vision like he could stretch it.

"Where is N-Niisama?"

"Lay your head flat."

Mokuba obeyed, "Please –"

"Your hair is still dirty, we need to wash it."

He turned on a faucet somewhere to the left and Mokuba's world faded to darkness.

* * *

VIII.

* * *

"You're going to kill him."

Pegasus left Seto's third bottle of water just outside the bars rather than force it through. "Feeling dramatic this evening, aren't we?"

"He's not me, Pegasus." And despite the angry reprimand he could feel burning itself across every inch of Pegasus's skull, he kept going, "If you keep this up he's going to break and then neither of us will have him, is that what you want?"

Crawford turned just slightly, the light of the wall torch dancing across the hidden half of his face. Instead of the glaring anger he expected, Pegasus's lips were set in an easy smile. "Jealousy really doesn't become you."

Seto grit his teeth. "That's what you said you "intended," to own us. If you keep Mokuba in a hole, you don't get him."

"Out of the kindness of my heart I tell you not to worry about Little Mokuba, and you repay me by breaking my rules. You know, you're really your own worst enemy."

Seto tightened his grip on the water bottle to vent the faintest bit of frustration, "How can you tell me not to worry about him when you're keeping him like an animal, _worse_ than if you kept an animal? He's never been away from me more than a few hours, he still has nightmares of –" He stopped, Pegasus didn't need to know that much. "How can I make you understand? What do you want me to say? Mokuba is barely eleven, whatever I've done to you, surely you know he's not guilty of. How could an eleven year old hurt you badly enough to deserve this?"

Pegasus stepped up to the bars, their faces inches from each other, "Make no mistake, Seto, I'm not the one failing to understand."

The light went out with the wave of his hand and he turned his back, just like he always did.

Seto cursed and threw the water bottle behind him, plastic crackling on impact before falling into a mess of –

 _Out of the kindness of my heart I tell you not to worry about Little Mokuba –_

He grabbed the bars and shook them.

"Wait!"

– _and you repay me by breaking my rules._

"How long?" He screamed. "How long?!"

The words, and their many meanings, echoed on.

* * *

XI.

* * *

Joey took inventory of the room, careful of the cameras that reminded him he was never alone. Dinner would be coming soon. Pegasus was a sloppy warden and made up for it with droves of hired muscle paid enough to follow whatever command slid out of his mouth. These were people with no conscience, no families, no motivation outside of getting rich. He knew the type and didn't. At least the kind of people he dealt with had some motivation to live the good life, these guys were trapped on an island and only got out on a leash, no way Pegasus let them back on dry land without six targets on their back.

Which meant talking wouldn't help. Not to people like this.

He walked another lap around the room, anger making the swinging of his arms violent and erratic, pulling his breaths sharply through his chest.

Wires, fork prong, electrocution.

Water bottle, chemicals – though no bleach, fucking asshole – shower steam.

Footsteps, humming, he paused to assess what would do the most damage. Lamp, toilet tank lid, dresser drawer…he took position behind the door, holding his breath as he waited.

It swung opened and he sprung forward on a single step, smashing the picture of a smiling blonde woman against Pegasus's head.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh, nor do I claim rights to any of the affiliated characters.

Warnings/Notes: Profanity, reference to bodily injury, and nonconsensual, non-sexual touching.

* * *

I.

* * *

The door slammed closed behind him, shut in, cut off, air threading out through his ribs.

"Coward! _Fucking_ coward!" He kicked it sharply and didn't register the pain of bare-foot impact. The fists colliding with the door were supposed to be men barreling in, not his own desperate attempt to pry his way out.

The effort bruised his knuckles and stained his palms red, each breath a reminder that there had never been an opening.

He was just as trapped now as he had been in the dungeon, and suffocating four times faster.

"Come back here and face me!"

But he paced the bed and gauged the size of the room, the weight of the mattress and both box springs.

The men could come in at any time, too many of them to handle and with weapons he'd only seen on screens. He'd gotten nowhere and put everyone at risk for it.

 _What now?_

He clutched his head until his hands numbed.

 _What now?_

So many seconds wasted and he hadn't even managed to land a blow. He waited for the sea of men to barge in and take him away, but the hall descended into terrible silence.

No one moved.

No one breathed.

* * *

II.

* * *

Ice hit the window pane like her foot slipping over a stair. A sharp jolt of panic anchored in her stomach and forced her brain to meet it halfway down, an unearthly feeling between sick and sinking. She pressed a hand to the glass and let the warmth of her skin against the cold surface become real. The smudges her fingers left became an oath. Rag in hand, cleaner at the ready, she paced the room.

It was winter.

Fall had come and gone already.

Pegasus was stealing – had stolen – a season of her life, which would turn into a year, which would turn into a decade. She was sitting on her hands waiting for mercy that wouldn't come.

She stared out the window, letting the spray bottle hit the carpet without regard for the stain it would leave.

For the first time in three and a half months, she was wide awake.

Until night broke she curled her hands to fists, staved off the deepening chill of the room against the outside weather, and waited.

By the third day with no sign of him, each passing hour sapped resolve from her bones, leaving cracks that worry crept in through. She glanced back at the smudges of her fingerprints like they would disappear if she kept her eyes off them too long, but for something to do – for anything to ignore that Pegasus was taking too long – she dusted the dresser again.

The food she'd been given had dwindled to scraps and she needed to wash the clothes she was in to get the smell of ammonia out of her shirt sleeves. There was bar soap she could flake, a tub to wash them in, but no spare outfit. If she wanted to do her own laundry it would be in nothing but a towel, watching the door and praying it didn't creak open.

She stared at the camera in the corner of the room and gripped her elbow with the opposite hand, squeezing hard.

She left the mark of her defiance in the pigment of her own skin and, an hour before midnight, wiped it from the window with the rag she had dropped.

A clean surrender.

Because Pegasus had stolen fall and would steal winter too. He held fast to Christmas, New Year, Joey's birthday in January. Between his fingers, reeling in around them the more she watched the wind and the sun and the stars roll by, he held her high school years. Spring orientation, university applications, entrance exams and plans to travel abroad, the career as a dancer dying in the weakening muscles of her legs –

She had to hand herself to a man who had stolen everything from her.

Who wouldn't be satisfied until she was happy for it.

Because, if she didn't, he would take her anyway.

How long could she convince herself an existence like that was worth having?

* * *

III.

* * *

Tristan was still moving the bed against the far wall when the door opened. His grip slacked and the mattress groaned while he eased it down onto the box springs.

"Did you bring water?"

"You have a faucet." Pegasus replied, drumming his fingers on the bottom of the paper plate as he made a turn of the room.

"The pipes froze last night."

"Then you made a rather grave mistake, Japan's winters are cold enough you should have known to let them drip."

Tristan closed his eyes to swallow down the fight Pegasus could hear anyway.

It had been three, going on four days since he'd eaten, a week since he'd seen any of his friends. Babying the pipes in his prison cell hadn't been a top priority.

"You're right," He said, "I know better."

"How long will it be, do you think, before you can look at me?" Pegasus left the plate on the dresser and propped himself against it, crossing one leg lazily over the other. The back of Tristan's head didn't read like resistance any more than the clutching of his hands to fists read like anger. "Truly Tristan, I'm hurt to think you haven't missed my company. Even I've wondered after your glower while trying to enjoy meals by myself."

"You never eat with me."

"But you eat with me. Who knew breakfast for one could be so much more entertaining that way?"

"What do you _want_?" He snapped, gathering the nerve to face Pegasus, "You practically kill an innocent man to drag us here, rig your tournament with death traps for your own amusement, and even that's not enough? Yugi agreed to your terms – took down other people who had stakes in this – just let Grandpa go and you can say you won the match. It was never about the title!"

The glint in Pegasus's human eye was a thousand times more horrifying, and more savage, than that of the gold behind his hair. "My, my, you came to a useful conclusion when left to nothing but your thoughts. Should I take the food and go, see if you can figure it out before you starve?"

"You're not going to do that."

"You've known that this long while, it's why your food was gone the first day while everyone else rationed. Tell me why."

"Where are the others?" Tristan asked, taking a step forward. He imagined Pegasus's reply. All the words he'd been collecting in anticipation of this moment. Would it help if I was in uniform? How long do I have to stand on your father's side of the bars until you realize how this works?

"I believe," Pegasus said brightly, plucking an apple slice from the plate and helping himself to a bite, "I asked you first."

* * *

VI.

* * *

"What's the matter, Yugi-boy, you look so nervous."

He abandoned the half-frozen rain for shards of a wish jutting out from Pegasus's fingers – _don't come in_ – and had to steady his racing heart when their eyes met. For days he had been alone, grappling with what he asked for and the bastardization Pegasus made of the request.

"I—what?"

The words sounded distant, like they hadn't come from his mouth, like this entire thing was an illusion he could wake up from if he squeezed his eyes shut tightly enough. But he couldn't, Pegasus's being was clothed in hypnotic sweetness, a mix of relief and panic.

He had been free of his captor, a man who dismantled his entire life, and only managed to enjoy it a handful of hours. The first night, when he thought the only thing on countdown was his food.

Now Pegasus offered breakfast, door closing softly behind him, and there was so much more than toast and fruit on the plate.

"Are the others okay?"

"They will be. You're only the second stop of the day."

It felt strange to put the plate on the bed, too casual for what this was, but he didn't have a choice. "Are we going to die here?"

"Death comes for all of us, I'm in no position to say when or where it will take you."

Yugi didn't know what was worse, the devastation flitting over Pegasus's features, or that he honestly seemed to believe himself. The stunned silence that followed was unbearable. Every second a reminder that his mind wasn't meant to be dormant, that another presence belonged there and had been ripped out like a child wailing for its mother's arms.

The spirit would know what to do, but the likelihood of getting to him from this room was non-existent.

"Please tell me when I can see them."

"You know I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Then you'd have no reason to learn."

Learn _what?_

"Teach me." Yugi whispered. His fists shook against his thighs when he sat down. An unspoken compromise – I'll get closer if you let me, I'll get closer if you give me a reason – the spirit's cries echoed in every beat of silence, a plea so loud it split the air. "Please, Pe – _sir_ , I can't do this anymore."

Pegasus moved the food into Yugi's lap, "Take one day at a time."

"You have my family, my friends."

"They're safe."

"I can't do this alone." He choked, "I never would have made it here without their help!"

"There's no need to panic, leaving you was only temporary. I'll come back unless you tell me not to."

Judging by his expression, it must have sounded to Pegasus like: I'll be here for you, but Yugi knew better than that.

It was an ultimatum. The one Ryou sensed from the first night in the dungeon.

Be grateful or die.

"I can't do this without them." He said, envisioning the spirit until his voice was strong and confident enough to convey his point.

Pegasus rose from the bed without flinching.

"Learn to."

* * *

V.

* * *

"We said we weren't going to cry."

Ryou touched the warm trail of his tears and shook himself from the daydream, "Sorry." He said, managing to keep his throat from constricting around the word, "Sometimes I get lonely for places I've never been."

The hot chocolate sloshed dangerously close to the edge of the mug and Pegasus cleared his throat as he brought it in. "Drink this; it'll lift your spirits."

No one cared about the state of his spirit unless they were trying to break it, but Ryou blinked owlishly at him as if trying to process the offer. "But where is yours?" He asked. "I couldn't."

"You must." Pegasus replied, and sat down on the bed.

Ryou sipped slowly, letting the steam steady his nerve while Pegasus refolded the new set of clothes he'd tucked under his arm. They would smell like him. This entire room would smell like him if he kept coming so regularly.

He started reciting poetry to force the thoughts down, something new every day so Pegasus wouldn't catch on if he was reading his mind. Eventually he would run out of pieces and have to start over. He had a hundred half-formed reasons, some of them evolving into stories, in case Pegasus asked why.

The only consolation Crawford truly leant was somehow getting rid of the ring, and even that was a double-edged sword. Without the spirit, it would be twice as hard to get out.

"How do you like the book?" Pegasus asked.

Ryou moved it into his lap, opening it so Pegasus could see how far he'd read, "I like it so far, but it makes everything you hear about on the news so much…different."

"Brings it into focus, doesn't it?"

Ryou nodded without knowing why, closing the pages that had somehow become too strong a testimonial of his own life, but more so because he had skipped to the end. He wondered if Pegasus needed to believe in the author's desperate struggle as a soldier more than he needed to cling to the idea that it was all just a made-for-TV dream sequence. Tragedy lined in gritty 'realism' because reality wasn't angst-ridden enough to rake in the money.

That's what all this amounted to, he guessed. Pegasus needed to create a tragedy worse than the one he'd endured, to placate his own suffering with someone else's.

When Pegasus started talking about a particular passage he liked, he let himself wonder – one last dangerous thought among thousands – if it was working.

Who had Pegasus lost?

How did keeping them here do anything but kill his loneliness? And if it was just loneliness holding them prisoner, how would they ever get out? Thousands of people must have wanted the company of a millionaire, why them?

A heat started building in his chest and he crossed his arms over it out of habit, the sensation dying off the moment Pegasus looked down.

"You'd tell me if he was lurking, wouldn't you?"

"It stirs like that a lot, sir; I never know when it's going to try and take me."

Pegasus nodded hesitantly, almost poignantly, as if the struggle was somehow intimate and shared. "You know this will all have to change if I can't trust you."

"Please –" Ryou pleaded, meeting Pegasus's eyes, "I never meant to hurt anyone. It's this thing inside me, I – I can't control it. Sometimes it talks to me late at night, it makes me think I'm talking to – I'm talking to –"

He waited for Pegasus to put a hand on his shoulder, but this time two fingers settled under his chin. "I know." Crawford replied. "They're cruel, aren't they?"

The heat of the millennium eye was like nothing he'd ever felt, bringing his entire consciousness into burning focus and shattering it.

 _Something inside us is the same._

The evil, manipulating him into thinking he was safe. Manipulating him into thinking he was different.

He was so tired of tender words he couldn't believe.

"I know it hurts a little, but I'll have to start checking to see if he's around." Pegasus said, withdrawing from the most private recess of Ryou's mind, concerned expression dripping memories of his mother Pegasus might as well have wiped off like mud on his shoes.

"I understand." He said, "Thank you for believing me."

 _In the fell clutch of circumstance  
I have not winced nor cried aloud,  
Under the bludgeonings of chance  
My head is bloody, but unbowed._

* * *

VI.

* * *

Mokuba huddled under the covers as the door opened, nudging the plate away when Pegasus laid it on the bed.

"You have to eat today." He said, sitting patiently beside him, "The nausea will be worse on an empty stomach."

It had been two days since Mokuba's transition from the infirmary to a room like most of the others, and the oral antibiotics kept him sick almost constantly. Between that and the panic attacks when he came anywhere near fluids, he was in bad shape again.

"Please, I need, I want…"

He remembered Pegasus's rules and clamped his mouth shut. Asking for Niisama wasn't allowed, and Niisama was the one thing he wanted in the whole world.

"You can take your time, but I need you to eat." Pegasus repeated.

He turned his head and forced a small sip of water – what Niisama would have told him to do – before sitting up.

"What day is it?"

"Wednesday," Pegasus replied, "The twenty ninth of December."

Mokuba clenched weak fists around the comforter to keep the world from breaking. The lump in his throat tightened every time he tried to swallow and he picked up an apple wedge to look like he was cooperating.

He'd missed Christmas with Niisama, one of the only holidays they spent together in its entirety. They might not have celebrated with fancy meals like everyone else, but Seto always made cinnamon rolls and ordered takeaway sushi for dinner, complete with movie marathons.

He closed his eyes, bringing the fruit to his lips and ignoring the way his stomach turned at just the smell.

If he focused really hard, he could imagine his room back home, the smell of sweets and artificial pine sap. Isono was wearing a Santa hat and leaving lumps of charcoal around the house.

His lips twitched, almost a smile, and he opened the present Seto left under the tree.

A drone.

The year before that, a pair of sneakers.

Seto smelled different around Christmas time, like chestnuts and cranberries and candle shops. He said because of all the gifts people left for the holiday season, but Mokuba knew better. It was because of the trips to the mall he would never admit to taking, scouting out the perfect present.

He always picked the perfect one.

Somehow, Niisama always understood.

It was like they had the same heart, and now it was ripped in two. He wondered, trying not to gag on the mealy apple, if Niisama was as broken as he was.

"That's it; you're doing so well today."

It took three slices of apple to get Pegasus to leave, and stayed down three minutes before he ran to the bathroom to be sick.

"Please come soon, Niisama."

* * *

VII.

* * *

Pegasus kneaded his fingers through Seto's hair to work the residual grit out, softening his movements when the boy's lashes fluttered. "Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day…"

When the warm water met his skin, Seto moved a wrist reflexively and the cuff rattled against the railing of the hospital bed. Pegasus paused in the effort, words dying into a soft hum at the back of his throat.

Patiently he held Seto's neck above the plastic basin of water, waiting for the lull of the sedative to pull him back under. It had taken two darts and three men to get him upstairs, another nurse to wash his body and put him in the hospital gown.

If he hadn't specifically requested to do the rest, they'd have taken care of it all.

But Seto's breathing slowed again, and carefully, very carefully, he picked up where he'd left off.

Cupping water with one hand to rinse Seto's head took a long while, but it was worth it to avoid waking him. He had wrapped a towel around his head to keep most of the cold out when he really started to rouse.

"Shh, shh, shh…" He whispered, "Be still." He pulled Seto's skin as taut as he could without fully waking him, and brought the razor down to shave the patchy hair growing over his lip. He wouldn't start growing it around his chin or neck for a few more years.

Cerulean eyes, so bright they seemed to bleed, blinked up at him. "Wha—the hell're—you—"

He brought a mask over Seto's face, holding his chin between thumb and index finger with the other hand.

"Hush now, Seto, we had plenty of time to talk."

Instinct kicked in and Seto pulled as hard as he could against both cuffs, getting them taut for a moment before the chains shook and his body went slack against the sheets, unfurling into sleep.

Pegasus chuckled, a prelude to the rest of his song, "I've got a beautiful feeling." He crooned, holding Seto's neck to part his hair, "Everything's going my way…"

* * *

VIII.

* * *

"Stand back from the door or get hurt." Croquet called, and despite the panic surging through him – it had been so long without visits, what if he never came back, what if he never went back to the others – Joey had to bite back the scoff.

He got as far back as the walls allowed and put both hands up, but stayed facing the door. "Bout time." He said when Pegasus walked through. No food and no water. At least the pipes hadn't frozen, but eventually he was going to get light-headed.

"It appears I've done you a disservice." Pegasus said with an easy smile, "I've lead you to believe you were like all the others."

Joey cocked an eyebrow and ignored the sinking feeling in his stomach that jumped straight to—

"You see," The CEO withdrew his phone and turned it to face Joey, crossing the room one, slow stride at a time to bring the livestream into focus. "The others are merely at my mercy."

He held up the broken frame with Cecelia's nearly-torn picture in the other hand, but Joey's eyes were glued to the phone.

Serenity was picking up the frilly decorations around a strange bedroom, making circles like she could find a way out. There wasn't even a discernable door. "Hello?" She called timidly, "Mom? Mom it's not funny, I'm really scared." One hand went to her bandages but came away trembling.

Through the window, a sniper dot found the crown of her head.

"You, dear Joseph, are in my debt."


End file.
